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McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

latimes.com

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Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#191

Post by burnt-resistor »

somenameforme wrote: post #107
f1shy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think this is exactly true. People may stop eating junk outside. But having a healthy balanced diet is more expensive than buying junk and eating at home; and not only in money, but more importantly (maybe) in time. Cooking takes time and effort, which families with both working parents may struggle with. Please do not forget often those people have more exhausting and abusive jobs. I know from first hand, h…

The problem is that people don't know how to cook. Something like pressure cookers (or crock pots where appropriate) are amazing for this sort of scenario. There are endless recipes you can find online that are toss a few ingredients in, wait, eat. Easy clean up, and delicious. I increasingly think cooking should be a part of basic education for everybody. Stuff like rice, beans, and chicken breast are extremely chea…

Not knowing how to cook isn't the main problem. Really poor people don't have time to cook and don't have any disposable income to buy a luxury like a pressure cooker, so this is fantasy. Really poor people are on SNAP (which doesn't cover a lot of fast food) and food banks (which provide random/useless stuff like unhealthy ultra processed food, dented canned food like canned corn and tomatoes, and random produce that requires a lot of time to use).

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#192

Post by anarticle »

The feeling for me is the market has bifurcated into: delivered expensive shit in a bag, or omakase sushi. The middle ground of cheap decent made to order food is largely gone or on the way out. There are diners in my area still but nearly everything is over 10 nearly 20.

The quality for delivery is astoundingly low for unbelievably high prices.

I cook way more and am healthier for it.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#193

Post by phil21 »

lisbbb wrote: post #152
f1shy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can’t. Maybe I’m getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse now than say 5 or 10 years ago.

My family and I ate at one this evening. My son wanted to try to the McRib. I'm not sure he loved it, but it looked fine. My wife and I both had the $5 McValue meal, and we got a free medium fry because it was Friday. We shared one of the drinks because I'm not supposed to be eating lots of sugar. Some McD's don't have a drink station in the public seating area anymore, but the one we go to does. All in all, it was n…

I’ve had McDonalds twice in the past 12mo. Once locally just because I was for whatever reason craving it, once on a late night last minute road trip in the middle of nowhere midwestern USA.

Hasn’t seemed to have a discernible quality difference since back when I ate it regularly a decade ago.

Prices noticeably up, but I refuse to use the app and am willing to pay extra for the privilege.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#194

Post by im3w1l »

f1shy wrote: post #72
FerretFred wrote: post #21

I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu screens that visibly tell you to hurry the f*k up and choose the product. Not to mention customers vying with delivery drivers for orders. I think the problem applies to all-income customers.

My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can’t. Maybe I’m getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse now than say 5 or 10 years ago.

For me it's the competition. So many competing chains and independent burger joints have sprung up and spoilt me. For 20%-30% more than mcd prices I can get something way way better.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#195

Post by stavros »

tzs wrote: post #144
ceejayoz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app drives me crazy on the occasions I do have to use it. Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can... pick fries again. Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.

Yeah, the McD app is ridiculous. For some items it gives me an add to order dialog and then an add to bag dialog (I might have the order of those two swapped). I'm not sure what the distinction is between adding to the order and adding to the bag. It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I…

Why do you go through the drive through twice instead of just pretending to be the next car as well?

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#196

Post by stavros »

Freedom2 wrote: post #133
esseph wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be exactly the same quality at least here in the US, that it has always been.

In some ways the rest of the world's McDonald's are simply plummeting to the low quality of those in the US.

Here in Greece, we have so much good quality street food that McDonald's is street trash by comparison. I don't consider it food, there are only about eight or nine restaurants in the entire country and I think most people go there because of the novelty.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#197

Post by stavros »

walthamstow wrote: post #112
somenameforme wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start cooking at home, because think of what you are buying: - one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?) - one slice of cheese - one egg - one slice of ham - one cup of coffee - one hashbrown £5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's fran…

It was hot and tasty and delivered near-instantly to my car at 6am. There's no way the fair price for that is less than a fiver. If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really say what £5 is or isn't worth anyway.

Yeeeeah I had a £4.50 coke yesterday. Getting a meal for that price is pretty good, even if meal is in quotes.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#198

Post by dingaling »

walthamstow wrote: post #81
detritus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, £4.20 for a Double Bacon & Egg McMuffin is just ... no. Why? I could swear it wasn't that long ago it was under £3. For a fiver I can get a better 'real' Bacon & Egg bap from an independent.

I paid £5.09 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal with coffee and a hash brown this morning. I think that's pretty reasonable, especially for London.

£5.09 is about 25 minutes work at National Minimum Wage ( £12.21 per hour ), about 5.6% of daily income at NMW and standard working hours.

A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it does seem to provide decent value.

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#199

Post by ctchocula »

goku12 wrote: post #187
silisili wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least from my perspective, COVID broke everything. People are more awful, quality is more awful, and prices are way up. I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen seemingly overnight.

> I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize the average time and cost of doing it, while still having access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though slightly repetitive. But if you real…

You can't finish your comment without sharing some of your favourite recipes =P

Re: McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

#200

Post by lumost »

lewiscollard wrote: post #190
FerretFred wrote: post #21

I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu screens that visibly tell you to hurry the f*k up and choose the product. Not to mention customers vying with delivery drivers for orders. I think the problem applies to all-income customers.

From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not know how long it would have actually taken because at that point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed even more of my time. McDonalds is not food and it i…

I do wonder if the US is soon to experience a regression in productivity due to compensation practices.

If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start to reduce effort to match?

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