When did fast food become so expensive? Like $8.50 for a value meal, really?

You are the guy that starts threads saying he hasnt worked in a decade and is going to live in a tent for the summer correct?

4 dollars? Damb thats a lot of money

>orders value meals instead of items from the dollar menu

It's all the same shit doofus. I spend like 3 bucks max

You could always, you know, try working for a living.

I don't even go to fast food anymore, there's a few cheap restaurants near me that are cheaper than fast food. 10x the quality too

Most places are starting to hide the dollar menu.

You have glaucoma

Not hide, remove. You can't buy a McDouble for a $1 anymore. You can buy 2 for $2.50 in some areas though, which is decent.

It could be that user is physically disabled, and cannot work, thus relying on disability income.

Supersize Me ruined everything. Suddenly it became a crime to provide huge portions for cheap, so all the major fast food companies have steadily downsized their menu items and jacked up the price to "discourage consumers from overeating" over the past 13 years. The portions are smaller, too. They downsized the portions when they began to post calorie counts because they wanted to be "healthier and more sustainable".

So now fast food is an overpriced mess you'd only go to out of laziness or because you have no time to prepare a real meal.

this tbqh

I hate mcdonalds meme fries so I get 3 double cheeseburgers instead of a bigmac, memefries and 10p worth of sugar water.

>So now fast food is an overpriced mess you'd only go to out of laziness or because you have no time to prepare a real meal.

Just like it's always been!

You know what else happened since Supersizeme came out? 30% inflation. $1 in 2004 (when the movie came out) is equivalent to $1.30 today. OFC either the food is going to go up in price, or portions are going to get smaller, or some combination of both.

Or he could be very dark-skinned.

where? I'd of thought the avocados would be too expensive

Whataburger bucks this trend, but they don't have a value menu. 8 bucks will get you a meal though.

Please educate yourself on the Consumer Price Index:

investopedia.com/terms/c/consumerpriceindex.asp
bls.gov/cpi/

I can't believe you would even have the audacity to be pissed about any of this, though. Your entire existence is parasitic and is effectively a net drain on society and the productive population.

>When did fast food become so expensive? Like $8.50 for a value meal, really?

It's a joke. You can buy a nice slab of protein and some vegetables and prepare a decent meal for what fast food cost today.

Britfag here, I never eat fast food anymore because it is far too expensive and the products aren't even worth it most of the time. However when I go to Europe I notice that fast food is generally much cheaper over there, like in Spain a KFC street box is something like 2 euros which is a fantastic price but in the UK it is closer to £5 just not worth it and I usually save my fast food binging when I go to Europe. Same deal with Burger King since in the airports they charge around £10 for a simple meal when you can get it in Spain again for about three euros.

Why does a sandwich at subway cost £4.80 (6 dollars)
It's a fucking sandwich

Someone could easily rival subway and undercut them

I think it's just fast food here user. Maccy ds is shite for what you pay. I just get a few cheeseburgers instead of falling for their fries meme and I dont drink pop anyway.
Subway charge through the arse as you say.
Burger king I find genuinely tasty so don't mind paying but they keep closing and my closest one is about 15 miles away.

When places like wetherspoons will do you a burger AND a pint for the price of a shitty big mac meal and an apple pie you dun goofed.

This is my fucking issue
My pub burger and a pint is 10 bucks
big mac meal is like 9 bucks

what takes the most piss is I'd be willing to bet people eating at mcdonalds and using the drive through is at least 50/50 (if not higher for drive through) So Wetherspoons has higher overheads there, plus they have their license to renew, I'll be generous and say similar amounts of staff to pay, breweries to pay and hassle with police to deal with on weekends.

Yet still produce a cheaper, better burger with a pint of Guinness. Than mcdonalds meat shavings in a bun with meme fries.

I understand the yanks loving it when they say they get double cheeseburgers for 75p. Fuck that would be good. They're £1.50 here and due to go up, a fucking big mac on it's own is close to £3.00/$5/6.00

Horrifying that it's actually multiple people really doing this

Fast food has always been about convenience though. You aren't just paying for the food, you're paying to have someone to make it for you, and quickly. If money is your concern you absolutely should make it yourself, because that's not what 'fast food' is for. It's for getting food, fast. It's a convenience service.

>implying the decline in the value of the dollar can account for the decline in portion size + cost increase alone

You're a fool if you think fast food companies didn't pay attention to the changing public perception of their industry and adjust accordingly. MUH INFLASHUN is an excuse, an excuse you bite down every single time.

I agree but see my points here
When somewhere with more overheads is beating you on price (as well as service, quality, venue etc) you're artificially inflating your worth

It's one reason why I'm glad I got the fuck out of the U.S. I graduated from law school in 2011, had zero job offers anywhere, got zero interviews anywhere, and would have seriously taken a pizza delivery job -- except that I was sleeping on my mother's couch, and Mom had moved to a "mixed" area where five women at a clothing store got herded into a back office and executed by some nigger because he wanted to steal their purses.

Got one interview and one job offer after over a year, and figured fuck it, even living in the third world would be better than the shit I was drowning in.

You can get a basic lunch here for two bucks, and a really nice one for five or six. I don't make much but I can put 50% of it away as savings because of the low costs and low taxes. And I'm living in an ocean-view penthouse apartment for $650/month.

Where do you liv user?

Oh no doubt. Companies don't price based on their costs or what would be reasonably profitable, but on what they can get away with, AKA 'what the market will support' according to some suit. A company has no concern but maximizing it's profitability. Quality is not a concern. Competetiveness is not a concern. These are FACTORS which can AFFECT profit so they pay attention to them, but really they don't care, whereas your local place just might.

McDonald's whole dollar menu debacle was an exercise in this, in fact. McDonalds, seeing it was the top of the shit heap and that it had superior logistics to it's competition, decided it could afford to take a loss on certain menu items in order to 1. Create a loss lead, encouraging people into stores to buy more expensive items with the lower prices, 2. Stifle the business of their competitors by creating a price point they could not hope to compete against.

And for a long time it worked, it's why you've seen fastfood thin out and above all DIVERSIFY since the 90's. Companies either died or combined. Companies branched out into different food items that McDonalds didn't have in order to compete - hence the rise of Tacobell/Subway. Other companies innovated by pushing against the healthy/fast trend that conventional wisdom said dominated the market - this was when you saw the rise of the self indulgent 'premium' burger or food experience, a-la Hardees/Carls

I never said anything about inflation being the only cause, user. Notice that I said "what ELSE happened".

OFC they public perception affected things. But it wasn't the only thing. Even if supersize me never came out you ought to expect price increases and/or portion size reductions for other reasons too.

In the end it backfired on McDonalds because it created an expectation of a low price point they couldn't actually maintain indefinitely, and it created for them a pervasive public image of being the 'cheap' place. People didn't go to McDonalds because they wanted McDonalds, they went to McDonalds because it was dirt ass cheap, with all the negative connotations that brings. Thats why now you see McDonalds moving away from the cheaper menu, attempting to diversify with more 'premium' items (chicken selects, hot wings all failed attempts, now the new Big Mac variants)

Interestingly enough, the rise of the internet as an omni-pervasive communications tool, services like yelp, and online menu's are eating away at the foundation of the entire big-chain concept - reliability. Chains became popular because they offered fast and reliable cuisine. People knew what they were getting, and could get it conveniently. This meant no risk of getting sick or having an overpriced bad meal. It gave travelers a sense of security. This, combined with sustenance from national marketing, gave chains a massive advantage over local places which had to sustain themselves on devoted clientele and word of mouth.

Now however, all the local spots are essentially at the tip of your fingers wherever you go. It is incredibly easy to find a business and discern it's quality. This is offering a larger opportunity for local restaurants to compete. It's doubtful we'll see fast food or chains shrink meaningfully, especially since they're getting a foot in on the developing world where their reliability and cleanliness can actually mean something (not giving you the shits alone is worth gold in countries like India or China). But you're going to see a growing market of small chain/local joints, I think, as those hidden gems become not so hidden. This doesn't mean the restaurant business will become any less risky, But it does mean changes to the landscape.

Checkers truly is the best fast food. Always fresh, delicious bacon crumbles and onion shreds, and a buck fifty for most of their sandwiches.

when (((they))) wanted burger flippers to be paid $15 an hour.

When the US dollar devalued

You have no idea what you're talking about. THe climb in Mcdonald's process dramatically predate the 2015 15$/hour campaign.

Taiwan. There's a lot that I hate about it (impossible to find a lot of stuff here because they make it and export all of it; no one in Taiwan will sell, e.g., a bag of 50 Nyloc size M5 nuts to you, you can either buy a shipping container full from the manufacturer -- if you can find them -- or shop online from Amazon). But the financials here are wonderful.