[lux-lux-lux]

It’s being dated is actually quite fatal to his thesis, as not only did McDonalds significantly underperform the market over the past few years but mid 2024 was also the exact time their attempt to pivot to higher income brackets stumbled and they were forced to introduce stuff like the $5 meal deal to stop hemorrhaging customers.

[mpyne]

Yeah my overall spending at McDonald's declined significantly after the 2022 bout with inflation, and it's not just that prices went up (it was inflation, they mostly all went up), but that they leaned into trying to appeal to people who would already have been spending lots of money.

It would have been one thing just to make the food taste better, but they went the opposite and made it take forever to prepare and serve. But for me the whole point to McDonald's was to get in, eat something consistently decent, get out quickly. So they actually made things worse, because I already had plenty of other spots to get "nice" food if that's what I was in the mood for.

I'm not going to say bring back the heat lamps per se but there was a lot of value to people like me in having a restaurant that delivered on the original promise of "fast" food...

[conception]

But in the last 4 weeks they’ve significantly cut back on the number of deals they offer in-app and increased the price of items in their point scheme. It used to be “you can get a good deal in the app” but no longer.