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McDonald's is changing up its dollar menus:
The world's largest restaurant chain, facing heavy competition in the U.S., will launch a new value-priced menu nationally next year. The lineup will offer items for $1, $2 and $3, the company said on Tuesday.
[...] But McDonald's is adding the new menu from a position of strength. It has seen U.S. restaurant traffic grow for two consecutive quarters, following years of declines. With the new value lineup, the company is trying to lock in those gains, said Michael Halen, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
All-day breakfast, "premium" burger options, McCafes, dollar soft drinks, 2-for-$5 deals, and UberEATS delivery seem to have kept McDonald's strong amid changing consumer attitudes about fast food:
Aggressive U.S. promotions included $1 any-size soft drinks, $2 McCafe smoothies and espresso drinks and McPick 2 offers of two items for $5. The changes, part of a turnaround plan under CEO Easterbrook, came as McDonald's catches up with Chipotle, Wendy's Co and other chains that raised the bar for what consumers can expect from quick-serve restaurants.
McDonald's shares have climbed 65 percent since Easterbrook was named CEO in March 2015, well ahead of Wendy's 37 percent gain and nearly triple the S&P 500's rise over the same period.
Also at NYT.
Previously: All-Day Breakfast Boosts McDonald's Profits
America Gets Even Fatter From 2015-2016
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:26PM (12 children)
Soy is still cheaper.
Was stuck eating at a McD last summer. They have slightly upgraded from all illegal alien staff to importing poor people who take the bus for two hours (only customer cars in the lot) for each short shift and have terrible working, service, and cleaning habits. The disadvantage of lower class citizen employees is you can hear some interesting language "fuck" for example and its in english not spanish so its weird taking the kids there, well kids thats just how poor black people are, and you're not a poor black person, so if you'd avoid saying "fuck" when talking to school teachers and grannie, I'd appreciate it. The illegal aliens also did a MUCH better job of cleaning, although it was nicer than the worst dive bars I've seen. The restaurant was essentially empty at 5:45pm which is not a good sign, then again it took about ten minutes to get my burger and fries so I can see why its empty. The Culvers a couple miles down the road (and it was raining and I was on foot and tightly time constrained so I couldn't walk there) is always full and tastes much better and only costs a couple bucks more and is clean. The meat-like-product was smaller portion than I remember and weird like tasteless jerky fibers or like somewhat tenderized cube-steak "meat" thats dipped in broth for a brief shot of flavor. That ain't beef, whatever it is. The bun had that weird chemical taste and smell like wonder bread preservatives I remember from my youth, not like real bread, not even like the bread McD used to use in the 80s. The highly preserved bread was a simulation of fresh in that it was soft, although with all those preservatives it could be weeks old, who knows. The condiments are WAY more sugary than I remember as a youth, the ketchup is like the creamy stuff at the center of candies, doesn't taste like tomato at all. Its red frosting. The mustard also didn't taste like mustard but tasted like vinegar jelly if that makes any sense. The pickle is the only thing that tasted normal. The fries were crispy as fuck which I understand is now done by dipping them in sugar solution and carmelizing it in the fryer, which makes it taste different and have a weird texture compared to lard-double-fried fries from the old days. On the bright side everything was smoking hot and chock full of preservatives so I did not get sick as occasionally used to happen at McD.
To some extent a problem older or more tuned in people have is early adopter syndrome where long ago all smartphones cost $100+ monthly contracts or, more on topic, McDonalds was fast and edible vs a place like Culvers which is not as fast but tastes great, so if you're in a hurry you go to McD because thats what you had to do in the 90s or maybe 00s. But now that McD is diverse, its very slow, and now its faster to go to Culvers.
It was very strange, it was similar to going to a McD in the 80s, but like a bad analog copy. WRT the service quality I felt much like the meme pix of the "Empire of Dust" movie dude saying "This is so tiresome", I can empathize with China-bro WRT dealing with an African economic system.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:47PM (2 children)
10 minutes to get your order in an EMPTY restaurant? I dare not imagine what was going on in the back of that place in those 10 minutes. Terrible.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:24PM (1 child)
Its a (typical for McD?) open design so I got to watch. They seemed very confused/disorganized. A lot of yelling before they got to work, maybe I interrupted break time? Like seriously, I know its just McD, but mise en place, MFers, if you're going into the cooler three times to make some dudes hamburger maybe you should stop, think, and go in the cooler one time for three things to save some time. Rocket surgeon looks at the fries, looks at the fries again, carries on with whatever he was doing, at the very end of prep notices there's only about half a pack of fries actually available when he actually tries to gather them into the cardboard thingie, so dumps what little was there and starts cooking a basket of fries (after rooting around in the cooler for a minute to find the right pack of course, because who ever cooks fries at McD, I'm sure there's no reason to prep for that). Hmm forgot where the salt shaker was from last batch, perhaps weed will do that to you, he found it after a bit on the shelf in front of him. A real restaurant would keep at least one pack of fries ready all the time rather than waiting until the rest of the order is ready to notice there are no fries ready, or would have prepped the burger and the fries in parallel rather than strictly sequential processing.
In retrospect all the strictly local problems could be explained by the crew smoking up or using some kind of drugs on the job. What was going on in the back probably resembled a 70s era cheech and chong movie, that would explain a lot.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:31PM
Perfect example of why they need to fully automate.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:00PM (7 children)
Oh and follow up forgot some topics.
Maybe TMI but in the 90s McD was famous for the McD tummy after eating there, this wasn't just me it was my friends too, not just one restaurant, and not the type of food as homemade never did this, but a McD meal came with a quarter cup of fryer oil trans fat soaked into it, or maybe it was the preservatives, or who knows, but after the full feeling went away everyone got a little weird smelling gas and then weird texture and smell poop, maybe the sheer qty of grease overloaded our gallbladder or whatever. Your average teen boy does have an iron stomach so McD "food" overwhelming a teen boy stomach back in the 80s is kinda an accomplishment. This doesn't happen anymore, the food, even the fries, were not greasy and no tummy ache. Likely much lower fat, much higher carb, much lower fiber food compared to the 80s / 90s McD. This fits with observation that after the obvious felon weightlifter employees (gang tats, etc) I was roughly the third skinniest person in the room, which felt kinda nice, although damn there's a lot of fat people both eating and working at McD likely due to the low fat/high carb diet. Poor people in America are really, really fat. I mean there are and always have been some fat people at the uni or the library or the gym, but like everyone at McD or Walmart is fat as heck.
The cashier was also very slow. Either ridiculously new or really stupid. I worked retail more than a quarter century ago while in school and you can tell a lot about IQ or general horsepower "up there" by how long it takes to see 83 cents change on the register display (LEDs back then, PC LCDs now, LOL) and slap 3 quarters 1 nickel and 3 pennies in your hand, and this one was taking like 60 seconds to count it out and think real hard. Your standard issue IQ 100 teenager with a little practice can whip that out in 5 to 10 seconds and the real experienced/smart pros less than 5 secs. So that was interesting that even the illegal aliens could give change in American money faster. Wow. Of course the rest of service was extremely slow so the cashier isn't the limiter, but still, wow.
Those modern open top fast food garbage can designs are for really busy facilities like a Culvers where they have to empty the trash hourly because its so successful, so the trash doesn't get flies or smell. Of course, McD trash cans stink up the place. That was probably trash from days ago, who knows. No flies though, which made me wonder "how" and worry about pesticides in the food.
The placemats also used to be "IQ 100" or so coloring for little kids or wordsearch but the are pandering to a lower IQ clientele now where the placemats are ridiculous bilingual "see spot run" reading level advertisements for high carb food-like products. I get that they don't want white people working or eating there, and they only want the lowest class people working and eating there, but its pounded home in so many unexpected ways, even the placements... They may as well put on signs "High school grads not allowed on premises"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:08PM (4 children)
People in America are really, really fat. [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:46PM (3 children)
Maybe its a threshold effect. When I was a starving college student for a year or two I could only afford one pizza per day for dinner and some salad for lunch and that sounds awful but I remained thin, but note that I couldn't afford going to McD or excess junk food.
I had to start watching my diet when I began to do well enough that I could afford to supplement with a pint of fancy ice cream and then I could afford a sandwich and a can of soda instead of salad and now I can have garlic bread with my pizza and and and. Later on I upgraded to stir fries and food that is actually pretty healthy.
Theoretically under my hypothesis dirt poor people would be thin, or thinner, but (poor + $50/wk) will be fat as hell because $50/wk will provide a lot of delicious luxury carbs, coincidentally such as McD. Possibly there are no luxuries poor people can afford that provide quite as much satisfaction as carbs. Maybe a hundred years ago if a poor person had $5 they'd go to an opium den or whorehouse or gamble or see a movie or a live show, but economics and laws have changed such that today poor people's most enjoyable way to spend $5 is on pints of hyper carb ice cream or chips or similar. Libertarianism results in thin people while authoritarianism results in fat people? If everything poor people like except eating way too many Ben and Jerry ice cream cups is made illegal or upscaled, you'er gonna get some really fat poor people.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:08PM
Like half the posts on this thread are yours, and all of them are you jerking off in public over how icky and gross and dumb and disgusting all "the poors" are. We get it; we know what kind of person you are. Honestly? I'll take your tattoo'd weightlifting "thug" (thank you for not outright tossing the usual racial epithet...) over you any day.
I've got some bad news: after you do your stint in Hell, guess what tax bracket you're coming back in? :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:45PM (1 child)
My doctor just put me on a paleo diet less than a week ago, and I'm already feeling a bit thinner. It is a fair bit more expensive though, since meat and veggies have lower energy density and higher prices than grains and sugars.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:57PM
Give it time, for me it seemed to balance out. Some sugars are pretty expensive, the fancy ice cream and cakes and candies vs having an apple for desert.
My wok gets a lot more use than my cookie sheets, etc.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:28PM (1 child)
I can't quite make up my mind whether you're being entirely serious, exaggerating some, or exaggerating quite a lot. Around here, Mickey's employees still include white, black and now Mexican children, still in school. I first noticed "mature" or "middle aged" people in Mickey's (east coast) in late '80's, and that has increased some. The temporarily-out-of-prison crowd you describe hasn't made it here, where I live. The IQ's don't yet seem bizarre. There are some genuine-seeming retards, but there are also average and moderately bright people.
You almost make it sound like you live in a bad area of the country. Are you a Californian?
I will admit that I'm not a Mickey's officionado. I only visit about 4 to 6 times per year. I always feel stupid after having done so. "Damn, couldn't I have just waited until I got home? We have real food at home!'
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:34PM
CA oh god no. I refuse recruiter calls from CA. Midwest.
I had a (white) girlfriend in my junior year in the 80s who worked at a McD and my sister moved up in McD mgmt in the 90s and its very very unusual to see a white working at a McD, although I saw one just a could years back.
I suppose it varies a lot by area? I think the fundamental problem is housing price vs McD pay. If McD pay is optimistically $20K/yr and local houses are like $300K then no locals could possibly work there, it'll all be poor people taking bus for two hours from somewhere that $20K /yr actually does buy a house. And the midwest is extremely segregated, even more than the confederate south, so those poor people houses are going to be 100% blacks and illegals. In the midwest a movie like "Gran turino" where the poor people are extremely diverse is very unrealistic, we have inner cities with no white people for miles in every direction, for example. Yeah yeah I know "Gran Turino" was set in Detroit or something but that was just for the amusement of coasties who don't know any better, just fiction. Interestingly the inner cities are also segregated, there are areas of exclusively Spanish-speaking or all black but little mixing. If there are two white guys living in the inner city, then given the segregation I'm sure they're neighbors LOL. The burbs are much more integrated / diverse, but not much. Rural areas are 100% white aside from illegal farm laborers. We do have poor white people in the midwest but they are rural where there's no McD to work at anyway, they get into meth and disability fraud, mostly. Disability fraud doesn't exactly mesh with working at a McD anyway even if there is a McD locally. I suppose meth doesn't mesh well with working at McD either.
Some very midwest demographic graphs... the further you are from the city, the whiter the people are. NYC's graph is a little different LOL. The price of housing is very cheap rural and in the city, and it curves up to a max in the burbs, and McD is downscale and can only thrive in high road traffic areas. Crime graphs are a near perfect inverse of the whiteness (plus asian) graph and that means no business (such as McD) can survive in the city for long. So there's a maxima of McD in a ring or donut inside the suburb perimeter thats hollow at the core and drops to nothing in the low road traffic rural areas, at least in the midwest. So in the burbs we're familiar with McD although not that much. I must have driven past dozens of McD on my old commute to downtown. If you can afford to live in the burbs you go to Five Guys or Culvers or take a special trip to Chicago to go to Portillos or whatever, you wouldn't eat at McD. Another weird midwest graph... The amount of nightlife and cultural stuff peaks in the burbs in the midwest... they roll the sidewalks up and put them away around 6pm both downtown and rural. Theres nothing to do downtown after 6pm other than listen to gunshots or get involved yourself LOL.
Much like anywhere there are oddities like the usually college student apartments and associated dive bars that warp the usual average demographic graphs. Also you'll occasionally see weird things in the midwest like little gated communities literally on the other side of the tracks, or maybe river, where there's like two condo buildings with million dollar prices (usually high vacancy rates LOL) next door to poverty aka sometimes gentrification doesn't work LOL. Or a huge hospital or something with like one block wide of civilized residential in the middle of a ghetto. You see this all over the country, my "midwest demographic graphs" are just on average.
Another oddity, maybe important, maybe not, is airports are always part of the city in the midwest. There's been too much growth since air travel was developed. I understand out west its normal to have an airport 20, 30 miles from the city center, which must be weird. And on the coasts they were too overbuilt in the old days such that the airport has to be far away. But in the midwest there's "city" butting right up against airports all over which I guess is very unusual in the USA. Maybe airports make midwest neighborhoods poor because they're loud so our cities are only for the poor whereas you can live in downtown Manhattan and not hear 60 jetliners per hour take off every night all night.
Possibly higher population density or smaller zoning / less sprawl on the coasts masks those effects or something. I would imagine having an ocean harbor in the middle of downtown would have interesting economic and demographic effects.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:06PM
That's exposition of Shakespearean proportions, but I agree with you. I don't know what McDonald's has done to adulterate their food, but it has become downright poisonous. It makes you sick when you eat it.
If a person is craving a burger, Five Guys or Bare Burger seem like better options these days.
Given my druthers, I'd like to see restaurants like the Flexit Cafe [facebook.com] in Ellsworth, Maine, or the Laughing Planet Cafe [laughingplanetcafe.com] in Portland, Oregon, become more widespread. Their food is delicious and it's made from healthy ingredients. Not expensive, either.
Washington DC delenda est.