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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

#581

Post by johnisgood »

vacuity wrote: post #559
HumanOstrich wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hooked on fast food before, and I still grab some on occasion, but I don't understand these common excuses for why people HAVE to consume fast food. It's far cheaper to 1) buy unprocessed foods at the grocery store, 2) spend $20 a few times for cookware that will last plenty long enough, and 3) cook for 20min a day or do more preparation on the weekend. It doesn't require becoming a professional chef or buy…

Moreover, changing one's habits to cooking requires effort upfront, and its benefits may not be apparent (at least in the start).

I do not like cooking. Even just spending an hour on it sucks, and I would rather order, but I just cannot afford to order food on the daily, so I must cook something for a few days or the whole week.

If you do not have the money to order on the daily, then you either cook or someone else has to do the cooking.

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

#582

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

op00to wrote: post #529
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are only looking at 2020 and posting a source from 2021. Now look at 2021, 2022 and 2023. That’s the whole point. Sweden had slightly more excess mortality the first year especially amongst the elderly but they ended up doing similar or slightly better than their neighbours if you look at the whole pandemic. They did significantly better on other metrics however like youth mental health and education. I posted a…

That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls. The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic re…

> That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls.

> The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.

Exactly, that's exactly what I said and what the data show. We do agree except obviously there is absolutely nothing artificial about it. You can't discount the data because you don't like what it shows.

So, indeed, what the data show is that other countries barely postponned death despite Sweden having a dry tinder effect in 2020 - plenty of people vulnerable to respiratory diseases - following two years of mild flu. Sweden has indeed less excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 and tellingly the overall number is in every way comparable when it's not slightly better than the other Nordic countries. Sweden early losses in 2020 weren't even that large by the way.

To which I reach the inevitable conclusion, lockdowns were entirely useless, massive distruption of society - disproportionately impacting the youngest with schools closure - to gain mere weeks of life for the most vulnerables. Focusing on shielding the most vulnerables and putting in place containment habits were totally adequate counter measures. Once again, this is not in any way surprising, these were the WHO recommendations for containing an influenza pandemic.

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

#583

Post by GOD_Over_Djinn »

fragmede wrote: post #570
GOD_Over_Djinn wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This isn't about the later stuff. My statement was that being against lockdowns is an anti-social viewpoint and that you were rightly attacked for being against them. Nothing you've written challenges that. In a spherical vacuum of a society with no left right blue or China, no Epstein files, a pathogen has been introduced to your society. You don't know anything about it at all. It could be Ebola, it could be a tota…

[flagged]

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

#584

Post by aitchnyu »

cwillu wrote: post #304
ta12653421 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mahahahaaaaaa..... any restaurant that requires an App to access it, completely insane.

I had the mcdonalds app installed once, and then my phone pinged with a notification when I was driving near a mcdonalds. Never again.

I go through my apps and put most of them to deep sleep, ie never work in foreground. Later I heard from an internet stranger that a mobile operators app prevents users from using their phone as a Wifi hotspot.

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

#585

Post by potato3732842 »

johnisgood wrote: post #311
xg15 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?

>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.

There's a bougie breakfast/lunch place near me like that and it's wildly successful, seems like every year they open another location.

The joke conspiracy theory in my office is that the menu is made by a world class french chef who's mocking the median target/whole foods shopper who is the customer by making stuff that's objectively garbage and incompatible with the fundamentals of cooking and papering over it with sheer skill.

"haha ze dumb white wimmen want kale, I put kale in ze mac and cheese and I make them like it"

"Quinoa is trendy you say? I put quinoa in your motherfucking eggs".

Obviously I'm leaving out details but those are actual examples of combinations. Now the food doesn't suck per say, but it ain't great either. And yet the place is wildly successful.

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

#586

Post by foldr »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #278
swatcoder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A flat white is just a small latte (i.e. with a higher espresso to milk ratio). It's not based on filter coffee.

Half and half does not exist in the UK (or Europe more generally, AFAIK).

Filter coffee exists but is less common, especially now that office coffee tends to be handled by coffee machines that make espresso(-style) coffee.

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

#587

Post by BeFlatXIII »

diogenescynic wrote: post #519
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed.

Use critical thinking. Google it yourself. Come to your own conclusions. Don't just believe whatever you see on CNN and MSNBC.

So you're making things up, got it.

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

#588

Post by 1718627440 »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #566
wahern wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the app a small soda at McDonald's is ~$1 ($1.14 near me, but that may include the SF soda tax). Less than $2 for a large for those beckoning diabetes. But soda is definitely cheaper elsewhere, and drinks, even soda, are usually a profit center for almost any restaurant, but a loss leader at grocery stores. I remember in the mid 1990s when Coca-Cola and then Pepsi were trying to stem the tide of a decline in sa…

Yup i second this mcdonalds is cheap but they hid it as best as they can. You can minmax a good meal with 7.80 or so.

> You can minmax a good meal with 7.80 or so.

But at those price you can have a lot of eating-ready food at the grocery store. That is not cheap.

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

#589

Post by ghc »

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.

I walked by the morgue trucks, so no. You've been blinded by propaganda made by the same people who "document" alien encounters. If hospitals were actually empty the rates of healthcare worker burnout and subsequent shortage wouldn't have happened.

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

#590

Post by red-iron-pine »

venturecruelty wrote: post #542
twoodfin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they have progressively become a higher-margin business, which necessitates moving up market to consumers who will pay those margins.

Why do you _have_ to extract more money out of people just because you can? Is it truly not enough for the McDonald's executives?

publicly traded company, the stock price must go up. always.

and it's not the executives, it's the owners. those on the board, or who own a ton of shares.

stock price doesn't go up and those execs get replaced until they find someone who will.

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