Quick-service restaurants had a tough first quarter. Did fat whores ditch fast food ?

Good

Poor people find it expensive and rich people can get better.

We need to arm grade school teachers with weight and age progression software so that they may show these young kids the effects of a fast food diet. Kids need to see that their faces will be distorted by obesity, they'll have a host of other health issues. Young kids need to be taught basic cooking skills, this needs to start in grade school.

They should show the same thing but what they look like when they drop out of school or continue their education further. Probably would have some correlation with appearance/aging/weight.

Maybe Ozempic is finally taking a bite out of the fatties' former haunts.

I’m not buying anything from those gougers until they bring prices back down to $5-6 for a meal. They can fuck right off.

This shit is too expensive now.

Correct r6. This isn't about Ozempic use, increased health awareness or anything like that. It's about price and cost, fast-food has been price gouging for a while now and the people who mostly ate it - lower income Americans - can no longer afford it like they used to.

McDonalds, BK and their brethren seem to like to believe that their core customers are middle-class, when they know they aren't. Lower income customers are more sensitive to price increases and changes than their wealthier neighbors, and price hikes will influence their spending behavior.

I'd rather spend 10 bucks at lunch at a local mom and pop's restaurant - get better quality and service- instead of spending the same amount on shitty food through a drive-through experience.

Me too r9, but even that around here is more expensive, but it's better.

Who eats at Micky Ds anymore? Five Guys is better.

A lot of fast food places aren't that fast anymore either.

There's a Taco Bell near me and the few times I've been there over the last year or so it took 15-20 minutes to get the food. That was same whether for the long drive-thru wait or ordering inside at the kiosk.

If it takes as long to get the food as a sit down restaurant and the prices aren't much cheaper they can fuck off with their product that isn't great to begin with.

It does say in the article that prices - and bad weather in parts of the country this winter - is what did them in. But prices won't go down - once they got you paying top dollar, they don't lower their prices.

Fast food places are franchises and can dictate the prices, This is reactionary, They are raising prices because of the wage increases, In truth they are raising them beyond a reasonable amount for a reason. So people will complain. If people complain they can take a short term loss to combat the wage increase.

They should start offering leases for fast food meals that could be an innovative solution to keep austerity going

FAST FOOD AIN'T FAST ENUFF!

It’s all chemicals and toxic. On top of it I’m sure corporations are lobbying for tax credits, hammering a relief program to rebate any labor more than $7 an hour.

[quote]We need to arm grade school teachers with weight and age progression software so that they may show these young kids the effects of a fast food diet

Have you seen the size of public school teacher, especially women who teach in the inner city ( white or black?). They are the size of a house; hardly who should b teaching students about nutrition.

R18, so true.

I saw some fox news host complaining that two parents who work at mc donalds for 20 dollars an hour would be making 100K a year. He was corrected that it was actually about 80K a year and he said still that is too much money for easy work like that. I wished someone would ask him how hard he thinks his job is and how much he is paid,

I don't even remember the last time I had fast food.

Labor costs and food product inflation have made fast food too expensive.

r22 BS. Labor costs are pennies on the dollar.

one hash brown at mcdonalds here is 3.29

R20 It's an extremely narrow framing of hard. Hard only means the level of study you had to do before getting the job - it's an abstract and intellectualized idea. Many aspects of menial or low skill work are very hard, it just isn't difficult to acquire the necessary skills or training to do it. Most Americans buy this idea completely. It's very elitist and totally goes against the bootstrapping blue collar fantasy of the American character. Many high paying professional jobs that require degrees are phony and fake and any dummy could do it just like any dummy can flip a burger. It isn't hard to learn how to flip a burger or use a point of sale system. It's hard to be on your feet for 8 hours in a hot kitchen, it's hard to do meaningless monotonous tasks in a precise manner quickly without any stimulation, it's hard to be degraded and demeaned by customers and management, it's hard to tolerate the constant noise, it's hard to maintain enthusiasm with no incentives and under constant pressure to be efficient.

I don't wanna see oh these are just jobs for teenagers. You think teenagers are going to fully staff multiple huge sectors of the economy full time? Stop with these bulllshit fake arguments and just admit you are cruel and sadistic. You HATE so called "stupid" or "average" people. You specifically do not think they deserve to even meet the minimum standards for a healthy and decent life although you probably understand that it is necessary for them to maintain these full time positions in the labor force. Obviously we can not all be high level professionals, society would utterly collapse. You specifically want them to suffer, you specifically want and crave to see them see denied the very basic aspects of human dignity. You probably abuse them regularly in your daily life or at least fantasize about putting some stupid cashier who doesn't even deserve to sleep in a bed in their place. I hope everyone who thinks like this drops dead this instant

r25 idk why i tacked on "in their place" at the end there. i experienced a havana syndrome attack i think.

R25, I think R20 was disagreeing with the Fox host, not supporting him. You're going off on R20 for no reason.

Prices increased, portion sizes diminished. Bad. Customer service. Stay away.

R20 Even the $80k figure would be before taxes. In California, this fictional couple would end up taking home a combined $68,000 a year. $34,000 a year is basically poverty wages, especially when you consider the amount of driving Californians have to do combined with the cost of housing.

Oh, and I missed the part about them being parents, so this would mean that $68,000 a year would have to stretch to pay for three or more people. So not only would they be making barely enough to get by, but they also wouldn't qualify for any assistance. If both of them were hypothetically working full-time, that means they'd also have to pay fully out of pocket for daycare, which can cost as much as rent each month.

That host should be shot in the balls.

The fast food customer base is primarily the working class and the working poor - they are of course most sensitive to price hikes.

These corporations almost resent their working class customers always trying to dress up their food by making it seem more sophisticated and therefore justify higher prices.

No. Quick service isn't fast enough for them anymore. They're eating out of their refrigerators or grazing in supermarket aisles.

20 dollars an hour isn't 100 grand annually. What is wrong with fox news. Congenital stupidity.

They could cut their overhead by getting rid of the building maintenance as well as a lot of the employee expense by just having a machine fill a big trough out in some parking lot.

It's partly ozempic. The reddit groups are full of people who ate nothing but fast food 5 times a week who now can't even stand the smell of it.

r25 uh yeah I was not agreeing. You see at the end where I said I wished someone would ask him how much he makes and how hard he thinks his job is?

r27 I'm not attacking that poster, I'm adding to his sentiment in agreeance.

r36 oh you replied directly. as i stated before, i was just tagging on to you not directing my statement at you

Has the, just make it at home troll, commented yet?

It's no longer a casual decision to eat there. I weigh it against better when I have the time to eat at a full service restaurant. And now they're talking surge pricing? It's just like the labor market. "Why do people have opinions about being treated like shit?" Screw them and their trans fats.

I had time to kill today and hadn't had lunch so I went to McDonald's thinking to get two cheeseburgers and a small fountain drink (It was months since I ordered it from Uber Eats). There is no a la carte menu displayed for the usual food, just various combo meals.

I told the guy at the counter first off that I didn't want a combo and what I did want. The total came to $10 and change. WTF?! He gives me a drink cup that looks like a medium. I tell him I wanted a small drink. He said he'd give me a refund of the difference or something. I glanced up at the combo menu and notice that the 2 cheeseburger combo meal is about the same as the total he told me and asked if I could switch and he says I gave you a combo meal. I tell him that I had originally said I didn't want one. Then he still rings up a refund for a $1.94 or something. Said he would bring the food to my table. I get my Coke, sit down, and he brings me a bag with 1 double cheeseburger and what seemed like a large fry. The fries are salty as hell, but I ate them (This is about 2:30 in the afternoon) and ate the double cheeseburger. (I haven't had McDonald's french fries in probably at least 2 decades). Disgusting. Got out of the there with the rest of my medium (I think) Coke.

If this is typical of the people who work at McDonald's they don't deserve to make $15 or $20 an hour. Deaf or a total automaton, or just plain stupid.

Thanks for reading.

15 and 20 dollars an hour is a minimum wage to live in our society

Tough shit, R42. People shouldn't be paid for incompetence.

When I get home I look at my debit card purchases for the day and the $1.94 refund isn't even there. And the clown asked me to run my card again to do the promised refund.

The clown also appeared to be a manager, not just a regular line employee. That would make his behavior even less acceptable.

And how do you explain your existence, r43

No thanks I will make my own food at home I enjoy clean eating. Additionally, fast food restaurants not only have nutritionally compromised food but are also dangerous places to be inside given the fact that they attract an undesirable demographic

R44 I think refunds on debit cards take a few days to appear on your account. Check again this weekend, or early next week.

As a side note, if ever I go to McD's I always order my fries with 'no salt'. That way I'm guaranteed of getting hot fresh fries and no salt (which I don't need).

Why are we referring to fast food chains as "quick service restaurants"? I guess they're trying to trick fools into believing that this is something other than garbage junk food.

Spot on R48. I work for a chicken producer company who supplies half of Australia's chicken for human food consumption and the whole fast food industry is trying to rebrand the language used to describe their industry so that the negative health effects of their products are played down. They are doing this because they know they are the next "smoking". It comes from the evil fast food and soft drinks lobbies who are extremely powerful and tenacious and only interested in profit at any cost.

Most Mexican restaurants are the same or cheaper. Why would anyone eat fast food?

IDK where your Mexican restaurants are but other than Taco Bell which isn' t real anyway, Mexican restaurants cost far more than that here, and it's a shitty cheap place.

I just got back from Spain, where I was shocked to seeany very busy Taco Bells. It was bizarre.

Are fast casual places like Chipotle considered to be part of this Quick Service category? I really hope the midcentury burger and fries meal model dies it's long-overdue death.

We just got Panera. I got a turkey sandwich, my husband got a half turkey with chicken noodle soup. 25 dollars. I could have bought enough to make 10 sandwiches with that.

High prices for no reason piss me off.

Subway. Mulitgrain wrap. Lean protein. Salad. Sauce. Plus, you get to watch them make it.

For $25.00 you can go to a mid range sit down restaurant. Why go eat nasty fast food?

Fast food makes people fat. It's time to slim down America.

As well they should have a tough time. They have raised prices beyond a reasonable level. I can done in a decent place for the same price. I refuse to buy fast food, period. No way, no way. I'd rather sit down in a decent cafe and get a nice fresh salad and cup of soup for what these greedy fucks want for a grease-burger and fries.

^ Of course I meant 'dine'. @@

It's just too expensive.

I hardly ever eat fast food, but about a month ago I decided to grab a Subway sandwich when I was hungry and hadn't gone shopping yet.

It was $14 for a fucking footlong ham sandwich! I couldn't believe it. No drink, no chips. Just a sandwich.

A good ham sandwich at a decent restaurant is about $17 these days (after inflation). So why would I spend $14 for slop?

For a quarter pounder, large fries, coke and 10 piece nuggets, I pay $24 at McDonalds these days. I can get a great meal at a real restaurant for that price.

To be fair, R61, that's a lot of fucking food!

Snacking on cookies and crackers made me fat. Not fast food (which I rarely eat).

People who work and gave kids just don’t have time to cook like people used to. Both parents are usually working shitty jobs with crappy hours. Plus trying to take care of the kids and run a household is another damned job.

A lot of people east fast food because it’s the only thing they have time for between their job, shuttling their kids around, trying to get some laundry or cleaning done and maybe getting a few hours of sleep.

Now, it’s unaffordable.

R43 The head of Boeing resigned (perhaps forced out) just as the Bob Chapek the former CEO of Disney was fired. Do You know they were given many many millions for their incompetence? When even lives are at stake? So the guy was an idiot. At least you got a double cheeseburger.

I can remember stopping between shifts at two different jobs at a Lebanese restaurant and getting a massive plate of tasty, healthy food for next to nothing. It never occurred to me to go to McDonald's or any other fast food joint.