$3 for a single McDonald's hash brown? Some customers are fed up and pushing back
$3 for a single McDonald's hash brown? Some customers are fed up and pushing back
Corporate America may be bumping up against the limit of its power to keep raising prices as consumers in some markets cry uncle.
"Even though we're pushing through pricing, the consumer is tolerating it well," he said in October analyst call.
normal way to talk about 'fellow' human beings
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As someone who works in a mom and pop restaurant, I understand this. McDonalds is huge and buys/manufactures in bulk, sure, so their prices are gonna be cheaper, but their costs are still going up like the rest of us. It kills me to keep seeing our menu updates, but food is fucking expensive now. I'm not saying that McDonalds isn't pulling down a tidy profit, and if food costs dropped they probably wouldn't drop their price, but I don't put the price increase solely on them. Food costs are rising all over, and it's killing the business. I have a spreadsheet from 6 years ago when I first started analyzing our costs, and my most recent sheet shows anywhere between 150 and 200% increase across the board. That's absurd. So, blame McDonalds for whatever you want, I won't stop you, but make sure to aim some hate at the production side of things as well.
The end solution is still the same. If we stop buying it, McDonald's stops ordering it which gives the production companies shockedpikachu.gif
It's gotta start somewhere.
The issue is how many people love paying for McDonald's. Go home and cook for my family tonight? Nah, that's too much work. It's much easier to spend $50 at McDonald's.
And that will never happen. That is the consumer equivalent of kicking the can down the road. "I'll do my part and stop buying, surely everyone else will do the same and corporations will stop being greedy." That's never going to happen, and if you stop at that point, you may as well just keep buying it. Costs have to be regulated. Bailouts have to stop happening. Tax breaks have to end for corporations that don't act in the best interest of the taxed. We have to hold the government accountable for protecting it's people, because for as long as people have been people, we've found new and creative ways to fuck others over while justifying it as supply and demand. Supply and demand has been a lie since the dawn of the industrial revolution. There is no demand on the supply of necessities that cannot be met with modern means. The cost of grain is still the seed the soil and the sweat. Stop inflating costs, and the economy will balance. However, without regulation, those costs will continue to inflate, and the lowest will always have to suffer.
Pretty sure McDonald's has had more than a 200% increase in menu prices over the last 6 years. Pretty sure labor and other overhead has gone down, and last I checked those were a bigger portion of the menu price than the food itself.
I've heard food prices are up because of the Russian war raising the price of fertilizer (depends heavily on natural gas) and animal feed (Ukraine was one of the world's largest suppliers). McDonald's profits are up 17% year-over-year though, so they're definitely raising prices faster than their costs are increasing.