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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

#421

Post by vunderba »

johnisgood wrote: post #378
abracadaniel wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandmother cooked daily and taught her kids to cook. My mother cooked weekly and taught us to use the microwave. Sure anyone can learn to cook, just like anyone can learn to play the piano, but it requires time, money, dedication, and the push to get started. It’s much easier if you were taught some of the basics as a kid, or had an example in your life.

It still baffles me that people compare cooking to playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice? Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and paprika together, put it in oil, h…

Agreed. The analogies to playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language are pretty silly.

Cooking (provided you have access to some simple cookware) is literally printing out the recipe and FOLLOWING THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS. If that’s beyond someone’s abilities then I weep for the general state of mankind.

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

#422

Post by ac29 »

shagie wrote: post #412
johnisgood wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cost of time is something that's discounted ... and for some households, there isn't time (parents working two jobs type thing). One of the calculations in there is the dinner for 4 section of xkcd 980 https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-2003&y=-1465&z=6 While homemade rice and pinto beans is $9.26 ... when you add in the time for shopping, travel, prep, and cleanup it has an it has an effective cost of $41.80 If you t…

>While homemade rice and pinto beans is $9.26

At Whole Foods prices, $4.29 gets you 8000 calories of rice. Beans are more expensive per calorie but still very cheap. $9 would get you more beans and rice than a family of four could eat in an entire day.

Bought in bulk its even cheaper.

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

#423

Post by ac29 »

_heimdall wrote: post #418
_heimdall wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my area, good quality meat isn't any more expensive than good quality produce. By "good meat" I mean at least pasture raised, and by "good produce" I mean at least organic.

I'd be curious for a silent down vote to actually comment here. Do you take issue with the prices of meat and produce in my area?

I didnt vote one way or another but its odd to compare the cost of meat to the cost of produce. Far different calorie density and nutritional profile.

Maybe your point is that you spend about as much on meat as you do on produce, but that depends on your specific diet since they are not equivalent food groups.

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

#424

Post by diogenescynic »

shmeeed wrote: post #404
diogenescynic wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then why isn't it happening now? Why did Israel not fare better despite their much higher vaccination rates than Gaza without any vaccinations? It was never a pandemic and never anything more than a severe flu.

You got it all figured out, buddy. Good for you!

Yep, mock it all you like but it's because you can't explain it and it would make you too uncomfortable too acknowledge you don't know what you're talking about at all. Follow the school of fish into the net. Have at it.

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

#425

Post by diogenescynic »

listenallyall wrote: post #398
ghc wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Real people, citizen journalists documented empty hospitals and ERs with no activity while the mass media tried to sell you on "morgue trucks" lol. Trump got that whole ship sent to NYC and they never used it.

Yep and remember all those TikTok dance videos? The ERs were sooooo busy they had time to organize and practice and edit dance videos. Truly a crisis.

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

#426

Post by ac29 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #376
hyperpower wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$35 for 6 meals for two people at McDonalds? What? Where I live, one meal at McDonalds is about $12. So 6 * 2 * 12 = $144. Not that much of a difference. Also, if you aimed for 2200 calories per person per day with that $170, then it isn't really fair comparing to a single McDonald's meal, is it? It sounds like buying whole foods is cheaper.

Sorry, I didn't multiply by two; it would have been $70. I checked the nutrition facts on the menu, it was a mix of meal deals and had nearly the same calorie counts that I was aiming for. Still less than half the cost of groceries (minus all the food I already had). But if we're talking about the balance of macronutrients, I'd love to hear how you manage to beat the cost of fast food with legumes/nuts/yogurt and don…

> I'd love to hear how you manage to beat the cost of fast food with legumes/nuts/yogurt and don't have a huge percentage of your calories from fat

Lentils are $2/lb and a pound has approx 100g of protein. They've a little less than 1g of fat per 10g of protein.

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

#427

Post by AngryData »

roywiggins wrote: post #24
notepad0x90 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should consume a lot less beef. Wages haven't caught up with inflation in a long while, I'd hope McDonalds paying more would trigger a nationwide increase in wages (I know, too optimistic).

I'm not sure that's true about wage growth, especially at the low end: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ > In stark contrast to prior decades, low-wage workers experienced dramatically fast real [inflation-adjusted] wage growth between 2019 and 2023

1 decade of decent growth doesn't exactly negate multiple decades of negative growth though either.

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

#428

Post by AngryData »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #26
reppap wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget company leaderships and stock owners taking more and more profit out of companies than ever.

Take 100% of their salaries and profits and it would make a negligible, likely unnoticeable difference in this issue.

I find that hard to believe when their margins are double what they were a decade ago.

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

#429

Post by AngryData »

esseph wrote: post #129
josefritzishere wrote: post #124

Beef and salaries? They mean executive salaries right? Because average McDonald's hourly pay ranges starts at $8.94 per hour.

I live in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest US, and McDonald's hourly pay here starts at $14.45/hr

The average wage of McDonalds my entire state is only $12, which means considerable amounts of people are working for less than that. But even at your local wage, that's only $29,000 a year for full time work before taxes, it is still a garbage wage.

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

#430

Post by cultofmetatron »

xg15 wrote: post #291
lotsofpulp wrote: post #220

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...

Instant pot is like $80. throw in a cup of lentils, some frozen veggies and some rice/potatoes and you can chill while it cooks you a meal in an hour.
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