McDonald's is losing its low-income customers • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by adrian_b » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:21 AM UTC

burnt-resistor wrote: post #191

somenameforme wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

A good microwave oven is extremely cheap, about the same as the food for a few weeks.

I eat only food cooked by myself from raw ingredients, in a microwave oven. Previously I was cooking with traditional methods, but some years ago I have eventually discovered that I was misusing a microwave oven only for reheating, when it can be much better be used for cooking.

In most of the cases, I cook everything that I eat immediately before eating it, which rarely needs more than 20 minutes for cleaning/peeling/paring/slicing vegetables, cooking in the oven and washing dishes.

This is short enough. If I would go out to eat somewhere, I would loose much more time than that. The only thing that I do not cook immediately before eating is meat, as depending of its kind it may need up to 30 minutes of cooking in the oven, so I cook all the meat for a week during the weekend and I just reheat it and combine it with the garnish in the other days. When you cook for a large family, you can cook all the food for a week, for a few hours during a weekend day, and you can reheat the food in less than 5 minutes in all the other days.

You can even bake bread very quickly and with excellent results in a microwave oven. When I want bread, I bake it immediately before the meal. Cooking at home and using only raw ingredients results in a cost for food that is frequently even 10 times less than a similar dish would cost from a supermarket, while being more healthy due to the use of high quality ingredients without any dubious additives. Even for bread, home-made bread is about half of the price of supermarket bread. Eating in a restaurant is of course much more expensive than buying processed food from a supermarket, so the difference in cost is even higher.

Therefore I agree that most poor people spend too much on food that is also unhealthy, and that is because they do not know how to choose wisely what they eat and how to cook that quickly and inexpensively. I believe that these are essential survival skills that should be taught to everyone in elementary school, but, even if I had a much better education than most, that did not help me, so I have learned most of them only when old and after a lot of failed experiments.

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

#202

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:38 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #189

badc0ffee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but here in Canada, chicken breast is so not cheap.

Costco has been 2.99/lb for chicken breast about as long as I can remember now here in Chicago. It’s only sometimes better priced than the local supermarket, but the quality is consistent and price stable. If I have spare time on a weekend it can be picked up far cheaper in bulk from a food services supply store. 2 weeks ago when I last walked through the cooler section it was sitting at $1.29/lb in 40lb cases. Costs…

Not everyone lives near a Costco. Not everyone is a fan of the environmental cost of their cheap chickens, or whatever. When I lived in San Francisco there was a Costco but it was more inconvenient to get to via Muni than most of the alternatives. Their parking garage is an absolute zoo.

  If I have spare time on a weekend it can be picked up far cheaper in bulk
  from a food services supply store.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to store perishable items in bulk. Personally I struggle a bit to store a whole chicken in my fridge. Six and a half pounds (what you'd have to buy to get Costco's $3/lb price) is quite a lot. And if you want to cook that chicken first and then freeze it, you run a high risk of it just tasting weird.

I just checked around and for boneless, skinless chicken breasts:

  Sprouts $7/lb.
  Safeway $7/lb (more if you don't want the chlorine treated stuff).
  Trader Joe's $7.50/lb (but they've gained a reputation for nasty, woody chicken).
  Whole Foods out of stock.
  Lucky's $8.50/lb.
  Mollie Stone's $8.89/lb.
  Berkeley Bowl $9.59/lb.
  US Foods Chef Store $3.75/lb for *twelve pounds*.

At least out here there's a lot less variability than you're claiming, unless you're buying enough to fill your entire fridge/freezer.

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

#203

Post by tiew9Vii » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:38 AM UTC

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.

> My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant

That's the thing with McDonalds.

You could go in to any store no matter where you was and know you got a consistent level of hygiene, cleanliness, good fast efficient service and while not gourmet food you knew the food you was going to get was a consistent standard. It was the reliable, dependable safe option in a list of unknown options. McDonalds was McDonalds know matter where you was.

Now it's no longer clean as they got rid of all the staff replacing them with screens. Stores are generally filthy with mess everywhere.

There is no consistent service as they got rid of all the staff and replaced them with screens that sometime work, sometimes don't, often out of paper for receipts/order numbers.

It's no longer fast as you need to mess about with broken screens, and repeatedly declining up sell options each step of the way vs giving a order at the counter and being done.

The quality now varies from store to store

It's no longer cheap. For the price of a McDonalds, in Australia I can go in to a Pub/Hotel and get a better meal if i get a special.

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

#204

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:51 AM UTC

ta12653421 wrote: post #181

ta12653421 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thas fucking cheap! LOL Chicken well raised and fed, is usually good starting at around 30-40 EUR / kg. I supermarkets selling 1kg of chicken for 4-5 EUR / kg - I would not touch this.

The one who downvoted me obviously has a problem with high quality food. Animals held and then sold for 4-5 EUR per kg is pure shit. Period. I would rather eat groceries instead. Most people have no idea what high quality meet is because they buy their stuff always at large chains - remember: None of the sustainability-interested local farms sells to any of those supermarkt chains. You have to GO there to get your st…

The folks that this article is about are not the sort of folks who can afford €18/lb for protein. In the US, at least, cheap chicken can often be identified as it cooks up with a woody texture or suffers from a variety of visual defects. Out here I can't think of any farms selling chickens directly to consumers. More well regarded farms like Petaluma Poultry do, in fact, sell to the big chain grocery stores and that's closer to $5/lb for a whole "organic" chicken.

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

#205

Post by GOD_Over_Djinn » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #162

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.

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.

Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them.

I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 9:55 AM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #201

burnt-resistor wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

A good microwave oven is extremely cheap, about the same as the food for a few weeks. I eat only food cooked by myself from raw ingredients, in a microwave oven. Previously I was cooking with traditional methods, but some years ago I have eventually discovered that I was misusing a microwave oven only for reheating, when it can be much better be used for cooking. In most of the cases, I cook everything that I eat imm…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by throwawayqqq11 » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 10:00 AM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #188

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…

More expensive? Absolutely not. Never has been and is unlikely to ever be true. More difficult? Time consuming? Requires practice? Yes. Usually overblown though on all fronts, considering the types of families that seem to find ways to make cheap meals compared to those that do not in my experience. Fast food (and prepared/junk foods) are low friction and convenient. Cheap is not a metric they compete within.

Cooking your own food can generally be more expensive then anything mass produced because efficiency is usually better in centralized setups, but this depends on the meal. Including the time it takes, you will never beat eg. a bakery for more cost efficient bread.

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

#208

Post by whiplash451 » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 10:08 AM UTC

GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #205

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.

Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them. I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.

Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above?

Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

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

#209

Post by delichon » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 10:10 AM UTC

> Her brother, who works as a cashier, can’t afford meals out at all, she said. The cost of his diabetes medication has increased greatly, to about $200 a month, which she helps him cover.

This is an often unacknowledged part of the cost of fast food. It turns susceptible people into diabetics. As a diabetic there is little I can eat there, since I manage it with food not drugs. When I do I get a burger and throw out the bun, which isn't very thrifty.

If you just go with the flow and eat what this culture makes easiest, it's an unusual specimen who can be healthy and happy in late life. And it's not at all unusual to turn young people into patients.

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

#210

Post by walthamstow » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 10:15 AM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #198

walthamstow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For £5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and rice for nothing.