this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.

Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food "as a rare treat," he told CBS MoneyWatch. "Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices."

Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.

A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.

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[–] Jode@midwest.social 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It cost damn near 40 bucks to get two Jimmy John's sandwiches delivered. I could make 40 sandwiches for that price.

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[–] Dangy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Going vegan in the midwest has made avoiding fast food way too easy.

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[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 21 points 4 months ago

Businesses will charge as much as they can get away with.

If they CAN charge, they WILL charge, and as long as you keep buying, they'll keep gouging.

I hate to say it but maybe we could all afford to eat a little less often. We have an obesity epidemic. This "bliss point" hyper palatable processed garbage is killing us. If we stopped buying it, and learned to just fucking live with being hungry every so often, we wouldn't be dying of heart failure as much.

[–] Skyline969@lemmy.ca 20 points 4 months ago (7 children)

My solution to making home cooking taste better than fast food was buying a fat sack of MSG and using it in everything. Truly it’s the king of flavor.

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[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is HORRIBLE! If we DON'T give these places TAXPAYER BAILOUTS then we will be FORCED to eat at the cheaper LOCAL PLACES!

-Small Business Loving Republicans

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[–] Lightsong@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Conservatives gonna use this to justify shooting down minimum wage raise smh.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago

They’re going to blame minimum wage raises, even though it was happening before the minimum wage raises, and in states where the minimum wage wasn’t raised at all.

[–] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's actually serious enough that fast food companies are planning to reduce prices. It's unheard of.

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[–] esc27@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I stopped going to five guys three years ago when a burger, fries, and a drink hit over $20. I'm not sure the local place was ever under $10.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago (13 children)

If fast food prices get unaffordable, maybe people will eat healthier in the future. I cannot see a downside to this, at least not long term.

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[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

On the flipside it’s forcing people to make healthier choices.

[–] GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Cheaper doesn't necessarily mean healthier. I know when I was young, most nights I would make a box of rice a roni and chop up a hot dog to add in. It was about the cheapest meal I could make, but it definitely wasn't healthy.

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[–] westyvw@lemm.ee 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

If you have been eating fast food for anything other than a treat, something is wrong anyways.

It's never really been cheap, and it certainly has never been good for you.

Weird that everyone is suddenly talking about it now.

And 5 guys? Lol it's always been way over priced.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 16 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Five guys is a terrible example, they've always been crazy, but even five years ago BK, McDonald's, Wendy's had dollar menus with burgers and other substantial food items that poor people could access.

Those prices are suddenly firmly gone, and it happened earlier then and far outpaced even the rampant inflation in the US.

I agree that people shouldn't be eating that s***** fast food anyway, but a lot of low-income people saw those dollar menus and cheap fast food as lifelines, and within a few years the cheapest items have arbitrarily quadrupled Quinton toppled in price.

There is zero practical reason aside from profit that french fries cost more than they did 5 years ago. Potatoes are just about the easiest thing to grow and there have been no diseases or mitigating circumstances in the past 5 years that explain why someone living on a couple dollars a day can no longer buy a hash brown for a dollar.

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[–] RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And many parents working two jobs while living in a food desert have few good alternatives. Ain't got the time nor money.

That's how you keep folks scared.

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[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

That's even more reason to stay away from that junk rubbish.

[–] TacticsConsort@yiffit.net 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I love my local pizza place and I'm on good terms with the owner, but the prices have gone up enough that I've set a hard limit of only going there once a month, and there are some menu items that I explicitly just will not buy because they're so overpriced.

Cost frankly does define my dietary habits. The number one reason that I don't decide to grab the odd piece of vegan chicken to put in a bagel is because it costs 50% more than regular chicken.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (21 children)

The devil's bargain that the American Middle Class struck in the 70s was that women would enter the labor force and all the domestic work would be handled by a professional service sector. Rather than cooking at home, we all eat out at cheap kitchens. Rather maintaining a home, we just rent. Rather than spend a day cleaning, we have dishwashers and rumbas and cheap immigrants to do maid work. Rather than spending time outdoors, we get a gym membership. Rather than providing child care ourselves, we outsource to daycare centers. Etc, etc.

That deal has been breaking down since at least the Housing Crisis of '08, but its really kicked into high gear after COVID. What was supposed to be cheap industrialized outsourcing has climbed in cost by leaps and bounds.

You can argue that the original deal sucked. Establishing a permanent underclass to do the grunt labor of civilization had all sorts of awful knock on effects, not the least of which was the food getting saltier and sugarier and generally more awful for our physical health.

But the alternative is what? Tell half the population to get back in the kitchen? Boycott Big Agriculture? Just eat smaller portions?

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