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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

#211

Post by jdibs »

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…

I’m not American but my perspective here from Europe is that what most poor people I know have an abundance of is time.

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

#212

Post by bromuro »

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.

Here in Spain i have had only good experiences and i love sometimes going to McDonald!

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

#213

Post by ben_w »

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.

On the kcal/£ basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans: cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487 kcal/100g, £0.22/100g, about £0.15 for as many kcal as that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100

On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.

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

#214

Post by auggierose »

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…

Yup. Something really simple and cheap, and definitely not worse in nutrition than McDonald's: Buy a pack of chicken legs, marinate them to your liking (for example: olive oil, salt, pepper, smoked or unsmoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, chicken or veggie bouillon cube), let them sit for an hour. Put it into the oven for 50min to an hour at 160 degrees Celsius. Cook rice on the side. After chicken legs are done take them out, and mix rice into the juices. Add some ketchup if you like. Put chicken legs back on top. Bake for max 4 minutes at 200 degrees. Enjoy.

Now, that will take you about 2 hours to make in absolute time, but the actual time to do this is very little, a few minutes.

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

#215

Post by jhbadger »

jdibs wrote: post #211
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…

I’m not American but my perspective here from Europe is that what most poor people I know have an abundance of is time.

Are you interpreting "poor" as "unemployed"? The OP was talking about people who are employed full time but at a low level job (at a shop, or as a janitor or something like that).

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

#216

Post by jdibs »

jhbadger wrote: post #215
jdibs wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not American but my perspective here from Europe is that what most poor people I know have an abundance of is time.

Are you interpreting "poor" as "unemployed"? The OP was talking about people who are employed full time but at a low level job (at a shop, or as a janitor or something like that).

That definition of poor would make the majority of people poor.

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

#217

Post by philjw »

The lack of vegan options — and Trump flexing his one-day McDonald’s internship — finally pushed me to boycott McDonald’s altogether. Also it became slow with all the delivery drivers queuing up as well. Burger King might be raising prices too, but at least their deals are still decent, and every burger has a vegan option (which is supposedly even cheaper for them to produce).

My actual favorite “fast food” is IKEA — surprisingly good as a coworking spot, and their vegan Köttbullar are great. And honestly, in Germany who needs McDonald’s when there’s a good Döner place around? It’s basically a 5-in-1 burger: real bread, salad, sauces, and your choice of meat/halloumi/seitan.

From what I see here, McDonald’s mostly survives in low-density areas or as car-dependant late-night junk food where alternatives don’t exist. But if people go out less, or can’t afford a car anymore, that model gets shaky fast. There are simply too many better options now.

It reminds me of the same shrinkflation/bloat cycle we see with American pickup trucks: beds get smaller while prices balloon, and then people act surprised that these wank-tanks fail in Europe where efficient vans just work better. “Free market” also means that bad products eventually lose.

Same story with phones: everything keeps getting bigger, heavier, and more bloated with features nobody asked for. Bring back the iPhone Mini — not everything needs to be Super-Size Me.

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

#218

Post by kotaKat »

How many low income customers are going to sit there and figure out how to min-max the McDonald's App(tm) to get the best possible deal for their money?

They're not. They're priced out from the efforts and hoops required to get the deal.

And while there's deals in the app, not every deal is the best deal (leading to the min-max situation).

(I live somewhere super-rural where McD is one of the only lunch options. I've figured out that depending on promos, one of the 'cheapest' options is to take advantage of the "buy one get one for $1" double cheeseburger every day offer, then check the 'deals' section to see if there's a cheap fry offer (because fries are always expensive). Drink offers are never worth it when the sodas are always $1-$1.49 for a large soda, but sometimes there's a "free medium fries with purchase of drink" that definitely maximizes the value offer here. Combined, this 'meal' is often less than even the new Extra Value Meals they offer at below $6-7 depending on deal applied.)

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

#219

Post by bamboozled »

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.

A packet of crisps is now $4, yes they are fancy gourmet but they were three last year, it’s just insane . Next year they will be $5 I guess?

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

#220

Post by lotsofpulp »

delichon wrote: post #209

> 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…

It is unusual to see young people make the choices to not turn into patients.

It costs very little to eat mostly lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables, and drink mostly water without carbs dissolved in it, but no business is going to survive selling those things.

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