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McDonald's is losing its low-income customers

latimes.com

331–340 of 611 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are such restaurants around here in Europe but they are super expensive, so you are better off doing it on your own at home. Cooking a stew of lentils or any other legumes is very easy and does not consume that much time either, and you can cook for 3 days easily. Why are people not doing this?

I think you are having a too black and white opinion on the issue. As a founder it is actually cheaper for me to spend 1000$ on restaurant and take-out food per week than wasting time cooking for myself. Plus you support local businesses by eating out

It is cheaper to spend 1000$ on a restaurant than to take an hour or two to cook a very low-effort food that takes max 2 hours to cook and lasts for 3 days? I'm genuinely baffled.

Personally I would not call it a waste of 2 hours.

Either way, if you can afford it, then Godspeed. :D

I definitely do not have 1000 USD per week for food. I do not even have 100 USD per week for food.

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

#332
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Then why are profit margins bigger? Supply and demand as the reason for profit percentage increasing margin makes no sense. I’d be interested in how you’d debate that.

> Supply and demand as the reason for profit percentage increasing margin makes no sense. I’d be interested in how you’d debate that.

That was never my argument. The commenter I responded to edited his comment to add those points after I replied. This was his comment before:

> Companies cannot set prices arbitrarily

[Source required]

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

#333

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.

I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20 hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.

Two weeks to flatten the curve.

Institutions can only lose their credibility once. That was one of the worst things that Covid did.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its worth noting that you don't need to avoid meat if the goal is to avoid being a pharmaceutical patient.

Meat is more expensive though and GP was talking about a low cost healthy diet.

I can often get whole free range chickens for 99c/lb. So a 6lb chicken for $6.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20 hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.

[flagged]

Propaganda? COVID was the third most common verified cause of death in the US in the first 18 months after the lockdown started in March, and that's despite the lockdown. That's 10x more deaths per month than the particularly bad flu last year. Do you not remember the morgue trucks? The whole health system was overwhelmed.

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

#336
post #307
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From day one, I was hearing about suggestions of social distancing and NK1 masks would do 80% of the work for you. It took waaay to long for that information to disseminate.

The playbook we followed was straight out of the 1918 pandemic. Unfortunately, so was the public response to it.

What you’re failing to acknowledge is the public was right. It was “leadership” across the board that failed. It’s been documented and continues to be documented. It’s simply not advertised, else the lack of trust gap would widen and be more than justified.

The failure(s), we are worse off for it at this point. The handling of the COVID 19 pandemic was as misguided and anemic as Bush’s “Keep shopping” (i.e., his advise to the country in response to 9/11).

Blaming those without power for the shortcomings of those with power is revisionist history bullshit. T

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

#337
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where is the next cheap lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables fast food restaurant? I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...

There are plenty of these restaurants all around the world, they’re just not cheap. Poke bowls and salads and Sweetgreen are very popular, go to any downtown anywhere. But where McDonald’s uses shelf-stable, globally sourcable bulk materials, these places are the opposite. Both Coke and salads are mostly water, but the Coke ships as a concentrate and the salad ships whole. You can sign one contract and get a regular, reliable delivery of Coke to your stores in Houston, Anchorage and everywhere between; good luck doing that with salad. There also aren’t any great huge-markup upsells with healthy foods; the closest thing is guac, which costs a ton, meanwhile McDonalds can upsell you on fries or coke (which are basically free!) There’s the trend factor: Baja Blast is catchy and you can rotate it out for another neon soda in a week, how do you do that with arugula? Artificial ingredients provide more of a moat/proprietary edge; it is legally and practically trivial to copy a healthy sandwich. Healthy foods are more difficult to eat while walking or driving, so you need more seating. Then there’s the prep time, the addictive factor, calorie density…

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

#338
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where is the next cheap lentils/legumes/nuts/yogurt/vegetables fast food restaurant? I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...

> I think it's a weird concept of a society where all the parts of it with money are directing people to do one thing - but at the same time, the people are expected to do the exact opposite and it's their own fault if they follow the coercion...

You've summed up the foundation of our entire consumer economy quite well. And people might be able to devote their attention to several types of things they need and not fall prey to adversarial pop culture for those specific things, but nobody is capable of doing that for everything.

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