The “food” they have now is the product of decades of incremental changes made to cut cost and tinkering with fat, salt and sugar contents to fool your brain into giving you a dopamine hit for eating it. What they have now doesn’t even taste like hamburgers anymore.

I think you kind of need to define a bit what fast food means and what you consider small.

Following the McDonald’s model with a drive through, self-seating dining area, no table service, etc. those are mostly going to be chains, although some chains are pretty small, only operating in certain areas with a handful of locations.

And there are exceptions of course, some independent restaurants do have a drive through (often I see this setup when they move into a location that was formerly a corporate fast food place) and there’s chains or locations that don’t have a drive through, or do have table service, etc. but those tend to be exceptions rather than the rule.

If you expand it a bit to include other small, no-frills restaurants with a heavy emphasis on fast service and take-out, there’s a lot of places that could fit the bill. Pretty much every town has some little hole in the wall burger joint, deli, sandwich shop, taqueria, Chinese takeout, pizzeria, bodega, snack bar, etc. that you could potentially argue fits the fast food category.

Most of those places probably don’t exactly advertise themselves as fast food and would probably want to avoid that label (although to be fair, the same can probably be said for most fast food restaurants, I’ve never heard a McDonald’s commercial call themselves “fast food”)

There’s also going to be some overlap with other categories, fast-casual, convenience stores, etc. where the lines get blurred about what can be considered “fast food.”

In general though, in America, the term “fast food” is usually going to refer to the larger chains, and the smaller independent restaurants with otherwise similar service will be called something else.

We all wish

Not to try and discredit your or your boss or anything but a lot of people assume that they got salmonella from the last food they ate. Usually it’s from food they ate a day or so ago, as the incubation time is between 24 and 48 hours.

If he got sick right after eating McDonald’s food then it’s probably just a coincidence. Have he got sick 2 or 3 days later then yeah it was probably the McDonald’s burger.

Also what free glass?

The people that eat there are not tolerating their continued price gouging after the pandemic shortages.

Blame them for what? The sales decrease? That makes no sense.

Many have little choice in the matter.

So, something like shake shack?

Why not? It worked for Taco Bell.

They saw what Pepsi was doing with Frito-lay and figured why not?

I think this will be the long term impact.

Customers have been pushed to discover alternatives and are unlikely to return for reasons beside price and quality.

For example, there are sit down restaurants near me that haven’t raised their prices or have barely done so and are now cheaper than McDonald’s.

The fact that local one offs haven’t needed to raise prices signals to me that a large multinational company did not need to either. This adds a fuck off and die factor to my future purchasing decisions. I am not a price conscious customer but I take being gouged personally.

Wanna say they’re $2.79 where I’m at. I know for sure they were just under $3

It’s worse here in Canada.

$2.50 Cones were my breaking point. The tourist trap general store next to me does a decent waffle cone for $4.

You can get a pack of frozen hash browns for cheaper than that. Saves time, money, and tastier imo.

Taco Bell still has $1.25 bean and rice burritos where I live. It’s like 400 calories so it’s a pretty good deal.

I assume you are North American, look for small ethnic food shops. You will find better food at a cheaper price.

Hole-in-the-wall ethnic food shops/take out are the way. If you want 'murican fast food, you gotta break the bank… but find a little family owned taqueria that does their shit right and you can stuff your face with the best tacos you’ve ever eaten for like $3. Highly dependent on your local options ofc, so keep an eye out.

In my experience, the sketchier the restaurant looks, the better the food is.

Cheap food is still out there, but it’s not corporate food.

Corporations put profit above all, which is anathema to how every successful chain became successful. Whatever mechanism they had to stresamline production, negotiate with vendors, push addition products (would you like fries with that?), their primary goal was always consistency and value. You know what to expect, and it’s worth the money.

You’ll find that now in local diners, in food trucks, in cafes, and in small restaurants where they value good food over profit, but you won’t find it at most chain restaurants.