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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

#271

Post by maxerickson »

whiplash451 wrote: post #208
GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It can be that social order is partly maintained by conformance and a bunch of people found out that there aren't consequences for choosing not to conform.

In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always several comments saying "So what, who cares".

Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of other minor little things you might encounter in a given week.

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

#272

Post by 0_____0 »

globular-toast wrote: post #252
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.

I'd say you've just grown up and experienced decent food now. McDonald's is marketed to children and caters for the child-like palate: sweet, salty and acidic, like tomato ketchup. When I grew up in the UK in the 80s/90s we ate typical British food. Potatoes every day, boiled veg, baked beans, beige protein things. Back then it was possible to have "Chinese" or "Indian", but it's all total shit: overly sweet, not spi…

I think this is under-appreciated. The technology of food has progressed immensely in the last decades! Even recipes from the 90s don't hold up as well, because home cooks have access to more knowledge, techniques, tools, ingredients, foodstuffs. And of course if you look at photos of food and typical dining from the 80s you can sort of spot a difference visually as well.

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

#273

Post by 0_____0 »

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…

Microwaving fresh bread... WHAT??

You gotta drop a recipe or something, that is fascinating

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

#274

Post by somenameforme »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #160
plorkyeran wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price for each of those at my local supermarket when buying the low quality option in bulk: English Muffin: 70¢ Slice of cheese: 40¢ Egg: 40¢ Slice of Ham: 50¢ Hash browns: 40¢ Coffee: $1? In total $3.40. £5.09 for that in hot, prepared form ready to eat sounds cheap to me, not expensive.

Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?

I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters.

I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television.

Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

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

#275

Post by shagie »

ponector wrote: post #132
f1shy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also those people may not have time or energy to learn cooking by looking youtube. From an armchair, with good economic position and time and money for hobbies anyone can learn to cook by yt. But man I know some families where both parents (when there are 2!) come completely exhausted after 10 hs of hard work. We changed the quality of food on our home. The amount of money and time invested was much more than we expe…

>>> decent equipped kitchen, with enough room, knives and other tools are needed But you don't need too much to cook a healthy food. One pan, one pot, one knife and a spatula. Yes, not everything could be cooked with such setup, but tons of healthy cheap food.

The per person time commitment and food options for cooking for one is difficult. I would contend it's harder to cook a balanced meal for one person than it is for a family of four.

Buying things with portions for single servings has a premium on the price. Buying things at family size portions means that you have to have that for four nights in a row otherwise you've got wasted food (that is more expensive than the single portions).

For example, I've got a wok and can do a reasonable stir fry. Going and getting chicken for it meant that I had to get a pack of four chicken breasts... and I need to cook it before they spoil in my refrigerator. The vegetables (broccoli, pepper, carrots) were a bit better for keeping but you tended not to have one or two carrots unless you shopped the more expensive organic section. You get a 1lb bundle of carrots... and a lot of times, I'd end up throwing out some at the end of the week.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/ just isn't something that I can do and stay sane.

I can get a 3500 calorie deep dish pizza from Little Caesars for $15 ... and that's a good two days of caloric intake right there (there are even less expensive ones - I'm a fan of Detroit style). Four meals for $4 per meal. I think it was $12 when I was unemployed for a while a couple years ago.

I still have difficulty with grocery shopping portions for single servings and getting enough variety. I currently have a meal delivery / ready meal subscription that sends boxed raw ingredients that are 2 minutes of prep for a toaster oven and is about $12 per meal (600 - 800 calories). It's less expensive than door dash, the local diner, or the sit down casual dining and is portioned for cooking for one (and a lot healthier than four meals of pizza).

... However, being able to pay that much per meal isn't something that people who are getting priced out of McDs are able to do.

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

#276

Post by thelock85 »

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.

I have a slightly different take that everything was really broken right before, but Covid and its response brought everything to bear.

I see this play out a lot in ed reform politics where leaders conveniently compact decades of prior failure into the “Covid gap”.

To be sure Covid and the response produced a slew of new problems, too, but I think they are massively inflated by prior failures.

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

#277

Post by soared »

mmooss wrote: post #184
purplezooey wrote: post #134

Awkward writing in this article. "McDonald’s executives say the higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries, have pushed food prices up..." Beef and... salaries? I think I found the name of my new fast food place.

What is awkward about it?

It’s weird two have those to things in the same category. Beef is.. not at all similar to salaries. The only overlap is that they are costs.

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

#278

Post by PopAlongKid »

swatcoder wrote: post #98
jihadjihad wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The three beverages they ordered, two coffees and a soda, amounted to nearly $20 I don't live in CA, but this just seems insane? Even in "captive" locations like airports etc. where prices for stuff are higher than a typical brick-and-mortar location, I don't even understand how two coffees and a soda could approach $20. If they'd DoorDashed it, sure. But those numbers don't make sense.

You're probably imagining two black coffees, and all three drinks being of modest size like medium. But if you turn those into "specialty" coffees and upsize them, and then add ~10% sales tax, it's very plausible that the price was closer to $20 than $10. Between prices inflating and people's tastes being pretty unmoderated and indulgent for a long while now, the total cost of "everyday" expenses adds up quick. Even…

> simple black drip coffee drinks

I visited London last year and was surprised & disappointed that the McDonalds across from the Trocadero did not have any such thing as simple black drip coffee (to which I could add half-and-half). The closest I could come was "flat white", which I never heard of before in the U.S.

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

#279

Post by Tanoc »

whiplash451 wrote: post #208
GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Normal people were shown that they had no real bearing on the world, and were forced to live without being rushed for a year or in some places two. Without the need to constantly look over their shoulders for encroaching crises people started to examine the world around them. They had time to enjoy things without constantly battling with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that lead to procrastination just to recover a little bit. So many realized they were being deprived of not only recreation, but fulfilling their basic needs outside of food and sleep. So they shifted from fearing the systems that deprived them to loathing them and the people who administrated them, and resolved to deny contributing to those systems as much as possible. That's why there were so many sweeping changes starting in May of 2020, not in the way the systems of the world were run, but in the way the public at large engaged with them.

Much of what's been happening over the last five years can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth. Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and thought they would benefit from being new instigators for it.

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

#280

Post by ProllyInfamous »

If you're ever in GA/TN/NC, check out Cook Out and Pal's fast food establishments.

They cost just a little more than national chains, for a much more satisfying meal (still fast food tho).

Things I miss most about Austin (2nd-gen that left, a decade ago): H-E-B Grocery and P'Terry Hamburgers.

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