Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
Why do they choose like the highest price chains for these nonsensical articles.
I probably am gonna get a lot of hate for this. Isn’t that a good thing? Afterall processed food is the leading cause of most diseases today, most notably cancer. It’s about time organic food is promoted heavily and incorporated in the policy making.
about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food
Only 25%? Who hasn’t cut back, even if it’s subconsciously?
I know it’s just an anecdote, but my wife and I make a lot more than that and we’ve had to cut how often we get fast food because it’s become way too expensive.
Shit, half the time we just get sit-down service because the cost isn’t that much higher. Why would we get low quality fast food for $30 when we can go to a local sit-down restaurant and get higher quality food for $40, tip included?
It’s not just fast food. They’re getting the attention because they’re supposed to be cheap, but the price of eating out in general has jumped over the last 4 years or so.
For example: We often eat at a local barbecue place, usually getting the same order each time. (During the pandemic, we would get take out.) I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but when I looked it up a while back, I think we were paying ~$15 more now for the essentially the same order. Adding $15 on to a ~$30 order is a huge increase, as a percentage.
In general, our dining out expenses have gone way up since the start of the pandemic, but we aren’t eating out more often or ordering more extravagant foods. The prices have just gone up. (When we go out for meals, we go to a mix of fast food and casual dining places, some with counter service.)
I stopped going to five guys three years ago when a burger, fries, and a drink hit over $20. I’m not sure the local place was ever under $10.
Wendy’s 4 for $4 meal still going strong.
4 for $6 where I am :(
One Jr Bacon cheese burger is now $3.49 where I am, there are no longer 4 for deals…
i haven’t gotten fast food regularly in years (only once this year, trip to taco bell, feelin a bit proud tbh), but i have been lucky enough to WFH for a lot of that. when you’re starving and want something you just want it, even if it’s overpriced garbage. i dread the day of having to work an office job again.
what really pisses me off is the psychological manipulation: these companies think they can just rewire our brains with their dogshit marketing. ohh $3 is actually fair for 1 hashbrown. there was never a ““dollar menu””. they don’t even list the damn prices on their website like a normal restaurant. it’s so fucking shady and dishonest, the whole damn thing, the gray prison architecture, taking away the soda fountains from customers (and making the kitchen people worry about drinks as well). it’s so so fucking sick. WE’RE the ones suffering, they’re the ones looking at graphs and DESIGNING our suffering. they don’t have to pinch pennies, they don’t have to pinch shit. fuck mcdonal i CANNOT wait to see them fall.
My behavior has changed completely. Stay in and make stuff from scratch with my friends instead of going out
Once the cost was almost as much as a sit-down Restaurant. I just switched to them. Haven’t been to a fast food place in 2 to 3 years
A big Mac is like 11 bucks right now. The fuk.
The devil’s bargain that the American Middle Class struck in the 70s was that women would enter the labor force and all the domestic work would be handled by a professional service sector. Rather than cooking at home, we all eat out at cheap kitchens. Rather maintaining a home, we just rent. Rather than spend a day cleaning, we have dishwashers and rumbas and cheap immigrants to do maid work. Rather than spending time outdoors, we get a gym membership. Rather than providing child care ourselves, we outsource to daycare centers. Etc, etc.
That deal has been breaking down since at least the Housing Crisis of '08, but its really kicked into high gear after COVID. What was supposed to be cheap industrialized outsourcing has climbed in cost by leaps and bounds.
You can argue that the original deal sucked. Establishing a permanent underclass to do the grunt labor of civilization had all sorts of awful knock on effects, not the least of which was the food getting saltier and sugarier and generally more awful for our physical health.
But the alternative is what? Tell half the population to get back in the kitchen? Boycott Big Agriculture? Just eat smaller portions?
When I’m feeling wildly self-destructive, and my impulse control drops to zero, and I happen to be hungry, I might grab something from McDonalds, and I’m always shocked at how many other people are there. A lot of you are trapped so deep in corporate propaganda I don’t think there’s hope of escape for you.
Like, one guy lists how to make a burger with groceries because he can’t imagine anything else. And other folks are like: this is how poor people eat. Some else is like: Rice-a-Roni and hot dogs are the cheapest thing i could find; as if you don’t know what price per pound is. When I was so poor I couldn’t afford enough calories to maintain weight, I ate plain rice that I boiled and threw cheapest cheese on top; apples and frozen broccoli too. Only time I had a good BMI, ironically.
Some big plurality of our population is hypnotized & drugged to be thinking fast food is ok. What is wrong with so many people? Don’t let it end like this, please. Assume you are a brainwashed pig on a work treadmill of death. How are you going to get off of it? Like that’s the start of your real-life puzzle adventure video game. Now go! You have just pressed “Start”.
It’s actually serious enough that fast food companies are planning to reduce prices. It’s unheard of.
I suspect this reckoning is coming for other industries too.
In some companies when the post-pandemic shortages hit for real and hard, they rose prices until they actually could source enough stuff to actually serve customers. Then a very vocal group of “told you so” folks saying the fact they made same money with higher prices and fewer customers and thus less expense was what they should have been doing all along. So even as shortages eased, suddenly a lot of companies switched to “low volume, high margin” strategies, e.g. screw most customers, we can gouge a few and make the same money while taking care of fewer people.
Now you can see erosion in the “high margin” businesses, because that temporary success and the extent it continued was built on:
- Having no choice during the shortages
- Habits or some sort of lock in causing people to keep spending even after alternatives start opening up, but those wear out, and I think a lot of businesses are starting to feel this.
This is HORRIBLE! If we DON’T give these places TAXPAYER BAILOUTS then we will be FORCED to eat at the cheaper LOCAL PLACES!
-Small Business Loving Republicans
good. Maybe people will stop eating shit
If I eat fast food I always check their apps first for any deals. Arby’s had some decent deals a month ago (free sandwich with $3 purchase) but nothing since then and no chance I’m spending $12 for an Arby’s meal.
McDonald’s App is a little more consistent although they’ve got rid of a lot of the good deals.
Without the apps I wouldn’t eat at these places. It’s cheap food at nearly sit down prices.
