Saw an article recently, can’t remember where, that basically said that the sole reason fast food was doing so poorly was pricing. That McDonald’s was charging Texas Roadhouse prices, so people were choosing to skip McDonald’s and go to Texas Roadhouse.
I believe it. The whole appeal of fast food is that it’s fast and cheap.
As a european, fast food is just like a category of food, and more of an occasional treat for me. Normally, I just eat my own homemade food, which is even cheaper. So I guess I see it a little differently, and fast food is allowed to be not cheap if it’s “good”.
Hell yeah, gimme that cancer patty and those artery clogging fries, baby! But make the obesity water size “for kids”.
“Fast and cheap” as in cheaper than buying precooked food somewhere else. Of course stuff you make at home will be cheaper.
The thing is that at least in my corner of Europe, fast food costs about the same as a filling meal in a sit down restaurant that doesn’t deep fry or microwave everything.
There is an exception but they only have 3 locations in one single town. They’ve barely raised their prices in the last decade, they’re actually pretty fast, and there’s nearly always a bunch of people queued up.
EUn ‘n’ Out?
For many Americans it’s just lunch. If McD’s costs $5 they’re buying. If it costs $15 they’re packing.
Unless you get the promoted deals it’s starting to be like that everywhere. Near me if im getting two burgers and two fries, I spend less at five guys than I do at burger king. Why would I ever go to BK?
Even FG is unreasonable.
My wife and 6YO kid went to FG last week and spent $27 on a meal for two and they split the fries.
A few ounces of meat, 50 cents of soda, a couple potatoes and an arguably 2 nice quality rolls. That meal cost them $5. Even with inflated labor it should be more like $15.
Fucksake man, will you PLEASE think of the shareholders
Five guys is at the very bottom of my “list of things that are so needlessly expensive that now I actively hate”.
Cause they’re so fucking good, and they use better stuff than most.
The moment that changes… will be the day I either go no-beef, or start rioting.
They’ve barely raised their prices in the last decade, they’re actually pretty fast, and there’s nearly always a bunch of people queued up.
Depends on the location too. For my location everything on the menu is $2 more than it is in the nearby, similarly-sized city. And there’s a high quality Wendy’s right next door.
I’ll take good Wendy’s at half the price of Five Guys.
Of course everyone is doing tiered pricing. You either use their apps or pay double. I think half of it is to get the app on your phone, and the other half is simply to make you jump through hoops for lower pricing. They all want to charge obscene prices, and then if you object, give you an option other than not going there. “Just install our app” could just as easily be “pat your head while standing on one leg and rubbing your stomach, and we’ll give you 40% off.”
I’m sorry, but fuck Wendy’s. Yes, capitalism is in decline around us all, but fuck Wendy’s for deciding they’re gonna be the first in fast food to push that envelope to full-blown-shit mode. And their burgers are just eh.
(Hey, pssst… so, quoting etiquette typically means you’re not using the quoting carrot on something not in the the comment you are replying to without noting it in the comment somehow. I was staring very confused at my replies inbox for, like, 4-5 read throughs of your reply, because its an opinion I could have typed, and couldn’t remember at all lol. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️)
The data is delicious for ‘em. Assists in world domination plans. Not really but they’ll eventually fine tune who gets deals real good IMO.
Connect to LinkedIn to see pricing
Income based fast food prices
Sometimes I go there just for an order of fries because they’re just that good. I can’t bring myself to pay $14 for a burger though.
Five guys has been expensive for a long time. The rest just caught up more recently.
I would kill for an in-and-out burger on the East Coast. You can get a burger, fries, and drink for less than an Five Guys cheeseburger.
Five guys has been bad for a while. Super expensive for a really greasy burger. I had to stop eating there several years ago.
The recent Disney lawsuit reminded me of this. In order to get those deals, McDonald’s makes you use their app, and part of signing up for the app is agreeing to their ToS which has an arbitration clause
Selling your rights to Disney so you can get a cheaper burger is a uniquely American flavor of dystopia
Yeah but there’s no way a judge will follow that reasoning. The response to the arbitration argument was that the argument was “unconscionable” and “no reasonable person” would think signing up for Disney Plus means they can’t file a wrongful death suit for a restaurant that has nothing to do with Disney Plus.
Also the lawyer who made the arbitration argument just got his client so much bad PR that i’m sure Disney Plus will take a hit over it.
I was with you until
Disney Plus will take a hit over it.
The average consumer is just so damn apathetic that nothing will happen
found this, they all outpace the inflation rate so it’s just greed as always.
It’s sad that Taco Bell thinks it is gourmet Mexican Food now. Any local taco shop with Mexicans working in the kitchens will give you huge burritos for cheap. Without adding tofu to the ground beef.
That happens when you just think of a bigger number and forget the customer somewhere down the line.
Also publicly traded companies and shareholder value. Everything could be much cheaper if not for shareholders draining every penny from companies. Edit: and CEOs/ managers of course.
I very rarely eat out but if I am going to end up blowing on 30 on two meals I may as well blow 45 on a local spot with a seat and a hefty tip to the waiter.
and a hefty tip to the waiter.
And I detest tipping culture, though I of course don’t fault the wait staff. I’d rather go to a local joint that pays its people appropriately…which are hard to find, admittedly.
This is exactly what subway is doing.
“A regular deli charges $16 for a sub/hero/grinder/hoagie/pickafuckingnameforalongsandwitch so we’re charging $14! It’s less they’ll still come the econ 101 book says they will! I’ll take my multimillion dollar bonus now tyvm.”
Yeah, but a regular deli makes a decent fucking sandwich and isn’t using the cheapest institutional ingredients imaginable.
Except a regular deli actually puts meat on their subs instead of lightly rubbing the sub with a piece of turkey then filling it with lettuce.
There are a couple floating around out there, CNN/investopedia/Eat This Not That. The most scathing one I saw was from CNN, oddly enough: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/business/consumer-spending-travel-value-nightcap
I haven’t even considered McDonald’s because their pricing skyrocketed post pandemic when inflation was high. They saw other businesses justifying large price increases by blaming inflation and the idiot consumers accepting the lie, and just ignored the niche their product is in, cheap shit.
Before the pandemic to be able to get a McDouble, Spicy McChicken and Fries for $4 with tax. Granted, the fries were only $1 with a digital coupon, but that coupon was always there. It was like the 2 tacos for 99¢ deal at Jack in the Box, you just gotta use the app.
Now that same group of food is $9 and the coupons available are dogshit. 15% off my $10 meal is not a good deal when sales tax is $12%. I’m not really saving much compared to things like BOGO offers and $1 items like it used to be constantly.
Might as well, I’ve only eaten at two Roadhouses, but they were damn good for a chain steakhouse
I just stopped eating fast food altogether and started using our company cafe, prices at the drive-thru got absolutely ridiculous and the service got worse. I just eat a small salad and a drink, still costs around $6–7/day, but it’s way better than fast food prices. I could probably get it down cheaper if fruit and vegetables didn’t go bad so frequently, but our cafe’s rates are ok-ish, so I just make due with that.
prices at the drive-thru got absolutely ridiculous and the service got worse
And in the case of McDonald’s, the burgers and fries both taste like compressed napkins now. Idk WTF they’ve done to their burgers, but that’s not beef.
they brought the quality down to match the 5$… did they bring it back up to be worth 14?! i kinda doubt it
Not only that, they lowered the quality at the same time. I remember when a subway sandwich was still kinda gross, but at least it was filling and you could have a decently healthy calorie dollar if you ordered right. Now, half the weight of your sandwich is in that super sweetened bread and the meat portions are tiny
super sweetened bread
Fun fact: it’s so sweetened that the Supreme Court of Ireland (SCOI is a fun acronym) reclassified it as cake.
Also, Subway chicken is only 50% chicken.
To find out what the other 50% is, listen to the latest episode of my podcast Subway Exposure!
Just kidding, I don’t have a podcast. It’s soybeans.
It’s soybeans.
If that’s true I really wish they’d just start offering a tofu option at Subway so I don’t just have to get vegetables in bread lol
Was it Taco Bell people were complaining that the meat filling isn’t ground all ground beef? I was like sweet I’d rather it be seasoned veggie delight anyway. Meat quality is not the draw of Taco Bell.
Yea. Taco Bell Seasoned meat has been a seasoned freeze-dried tofu and beef blend for decades now.
Taco Bell claims 88% beef with water and seasoning composing the rest.
Probably them too but my memory is that Jack in the box tacos were soy, not sure if that’s true, but it sounded right for the two tacos / $1 back in the day.
They used to have a veggie patty. It was so bad, I regretted not just getting vegetables in bread.
Lol. Yeah some veggie patties can be horrendous. Like some of the ones from Aldi.
the tuna was also found to not be tuna.
That was just a rumor. Not that it isnt disgusting. I used to like it until i got a double meat version ans wondered wtf this pasty garbage was in my mouth. Disgusting!
Subway Exposure
I’m hoping that’s a different entity than the Subway Exposer
They rolled that, for tax purposes, it counts as a confectionary because of the high sugar content. They did not file that it is literally cake.
But what is cake if not bread plus sugar? 🤔
To me, it’s mainly gluten content. Cake is fluffy while bread is more chewy. You can have sweet breads and savoury breads. I imagine you can have savoury cakes too, but I’ve never had so I don’t know how good that would be.
I really don’t like subway, but they do have new chicken. Their old stuff was clearly not chicken. Their new stuff actually looks like chicken so I’m pretty sure the figure you are quoting is their old shit chicken
All of the above is concerning.
Last time ive seen a subway sandwich that wasn’t gross looking was in the 90s
I’ve been to Subway twice in the last twenty years. Both times the shop was understaffed and it took more than half an hour to get our meals, and they weren’t even good compared to other sub chains that cost less, let alone the local sub shops.
The last attempt was a few years before COVID. I can’t imagine how bad it is now.
My wife and I walked into a Subway recently to use the restrooms. Not an employee in sight. Did our business and walked out without seeing a single person. I would have thought they were closed had the lights not been on and the door unlocked. Don’t know how they stay in business.
I ordered a flatbread sandwich recently and the bread was extremely crusty and smelled old and bald. Subway is 100% in the gutter right now
I used to get a roasted chicken breast sub from Subway every day. The chicken slab was pre-cooked and literally sitting in a bucket of warm water, from which they would pull it and microwave it for a few seconds. How in the living fuck did I ever think it was OK for chicken to be sitting in a bucket of warm water all day?
This was around the time they stopped baking their own rolls in-store every day, and somehow I was also OK with the stale rolls that replaced it. I guess I was distracted by their pedophile spokesman.
The best local sandwich shop in my town sells really good ones for $8-11. If Subway were still $5 they might be competitive. At $14 it sounds like the company no longer understands its product.
The best sandwich shop in my town is the deli at the grocery store. They are less concerned about skimping on ingredients because it’s more important to entice you in and get you spending money in the aisles.
For $8 or $9 they will stuff a footlong sub so full they can barely fold it over. And it’s generally fresher ingredients than you’d find in a Subway
Publix?
Harris Teeter where I live. We do have Publix locations around now though. I still need to check them out and see if they live up to the hype.
There’s a Jewish deli near me that gives me a full meal for ~15USD and the sandwich they give you is PACKED with meat and incredible bread. It’s glorious. There’s no chance I’d go to Subway over that.
Local options are always better. The Mexican joint sells you a massive breakfast burrito for $6. Nepalese takeout will feed you for days for $16. Hot dog truck will fill you up with delicious processed meat for $4.
Subway? Subpar lunch made out of cardboard and ground up yoga mats for almost $20.
Why is it that fast food thinks it can charge for sit-down restaurant prices nowadays?
Greed is, by definition, when self interest becomes irrational.
It’s not greed, it’s just ““international factors”” that are causing them to put prices up. Russia invaded Ukraine so they have to charge extra for a sandwich of course!
Okay perhaps you’re joking, but this is something that people across the world are not aware of or don’t want to acknowledge. Ukraine is a major agricultural exporter, and a lot of their produce go to farmers across the world. The supply of many Ukrainian produce, especially grain, had been restricted which increased global food price and has not gone down to pre-war level. Fewer supply but more demand leads to higher price. Including in the link I gave, it mentioned that if the war is sustained for long, it could further worsen food crisis in many developing countries. There is a reason why Africa sent delegates to try to mediate on the conflict. But they won’t tell you that it is because they rely on stable global food price to feed their people, and much of chicken feeds used by African farmers are imported from Ukraine! People don’t see the full picture at how integrally interconnected we all are.
When a country sneeze, we all catch cold.
While that all sounds sane and rational, it’s a sad fact the price trend does not appear to go both ways. Do you believe that food prices will go back down after supply goes up?
The rational part of me thinks “yes, of course”. The cynical part of me thinks, “no, of course not, aritificially limiting supplies would be too profitable.”
I have never in my life witnessed a price going down, so no they won’t.
They are not “competitively” pricing their shit anyway. The only competition the megacorporations hold is on who can be the bigger, greedier asshole and get away with it.
its like selling us renewable energy technology via the argument: “why not use the energy of the sun and the wind, its free!” yet energy gets more and more expensive. inflation is a great tool to extract more and more money out of you. its very subtle and slow. but its a scaling effect that really pays out for someone on the receiving end.
Macroeconomics 101 would tell you no, prices won’t go down because prices are sticky. Like your salary for example, just because a business is doing poorly your wage won’t go down.
I won’t get into the weeds about it, but if Ukraine was magically restored tomorrow, prices wouldn’t go down but it would help prices from going up faster.
If we see prices go down that’s a bad thing, and we are in for a rough time.
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While that’s definitely a factor in global food trends, I don’t see that impacting the US price of food as drastically as companies thinking they can get away with raising prices.
My reasoning is the web of tarrifs and subsidies that the US uses to stabilize domestic markets, prop up farmers, and generally ensure the US is the key grain player. Shortly after the war started the US and Canada also saw a better than average harvest of the grains that Ukraine typically exports.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU02120301 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU3112113112111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL
The domestic prices paid for wheat and flour both started to fall shortly after the Ukraine invasion, while food prices maintained a rocketing trajectory without much if any changes, with only a slight decrease in the rate of increase about a year after.
While protectionist US food policies are chock full of horrible problems, in this case they should have insulated people from radical changes in the availability and price of wheat.
That consumer prices have risen despite falling costs paid to producers is a big indicator that the cost increases are due to something else in the US.None of this applies to countries that are dependent on grain imports who have to rely on the global markets instead of adjusting export profitability to stabilize things.
Trying to spin this into Africa doesn’t care about Ukraine except for the uptick in the cost of food price is crazy
i imagine if your country and the western world wanted to end the war, it could but they have no interest due to how profitable war is, so here we are
Well lookie here, a lemmy.ml account trying to spin a faux concern.
The only way for the war in Ukraine to end is if Russia pulls out from a conflict they started unprovoked, and which the UN General Assembly have overwhelmingly declared illegal. Will you advocate then for Russia to pull out?
Exactly, the Ukrainian seasoning costs way too much too import nowadays
That is not the definition of greed, what are you taking about? I agree that irrational greed is driving it though
Quit buying from giant corporations.
I can go to my local family owned Banh Mi joint and get a sandwich made with real meat and fresh bread for $6. For $12, I could add a boba tea and a side of fried dumplings.
Cool, I don’t have one of those. I have subway, mcdonalds, burger king, and a bunch of local restaurants that charge just as much for food because they can.
At least your rent is cheap compared to actual cities worth living in.
A lot of smaller places only have like two options for going out to eat and one is a subway attached to a gas station
Food deserts are real, and they show you real fast how exploitable you can be.
Food deserts are real, and they show how onerous overregulation is.
All of the identical “I live in a food desert” comments here should be opportunities for entrepreneurship, but the costs of legally operating a food business are too damned high.
I don’t think that’s regulation bud that’s monopolies
How is a monopoly gonna make it more expensive to start a business? That doesn’t make any sense?
Agreed! The Person you Responded to is NONSENSE. It’s ABSURD that the ONE Company that owns everything you need to get Started would make it Expensive for you to Start!
Oh you’re talking about an upstream monopoly.
Is there a monopoly in food prep equipment?
Popeyes and Taco John’s at the Love’s.
Well, good for you. The town I live in has a Sonic, a McDonald’s, a Mazzio’s pizza, two local Tex Mex restaurants, and… a Subway.
Only works when you have local joints. That being said, I’m from Jersey, and I think we kinda pride ourselves on all things bread: pizza, bagels, and sandwiches. So when I hear motherfuckers getting Dunkin Donuts in the morning, Subway for lunch, and Dominos for dinner, it disturbs me.
Now, is there a time for Dominos? Absolutely. Is there a time for Subway? I guess you can be drunk on the afternoon, sure.
From jersey too and it blows my mind how anyone around here will choose to go to jersey Mike’s or subway over their local deli
We don’t have a local deli here in small town mid America unless you count the deli counter at the supermarket.
Milk tea where I am is 6 usd by itself (not incl tax)
Please bring me back to the 3 dollar milk tea timeline
And if you don’t have any local places nearby you can either break yourself financially by moving somewhere else or just go fuck yourself. I never realized how much shit was jacked up in the small country town I lived in until I moved somewhere with a ton of competition. Suddenly the prices were way better, it was surreal
Except it still took me a decade before I could move without fucking myself.
This comment was written in the early wee hours of the AM and I’m not entirely sure what I’m rambling about.
Yeah but why would you want real meat? That’s gross.
Fast food is losing the plot. If it isn’t cheap, then there is really no point.
Yep. No one is going to McDonalds for a delicious burger, just a cheap and fast one. Now that prices are above $10 if you want a meal, and the restaurants are understaffed so even the drive through takes > 15 minutes, there’s really no reason to eat there
drive through just have very low throughput in general, if it takes you 15 minutes to order from drive through, it would be likely to be faster to park your car and walk in for a take out
or some mcdonalds even let you mobile order and pick up on designated spots, they added that because it gets better throughput than drive through.
As someone who worked in an understaffed fast food restaurant for like 3 years… No, going inside doesn’t make your order faster. From my experience, orders get made in chronological order of when they were placed. You may be able to place your order quicker (if you’re lucky there’s enough staff to take an in-store order while there’s people in the drive through) but you will probably still wait about the same since the food can only be made so fast, and the few people have to splits their attention even more.
If it’s a normally staffed restaurant then you might have luck, but usually long wait times in the drive through aren’t because the drive through itself is slow… Excluding the random people who pull up with the good ol’, “can I get a uuuuuhhhhhhh…”
that’s when the app shines. You basically cut the ordering queue, which drive through users cannot avoid at all.
Also even if stuffs are prepared in chronological order, they don’t literally need to fulfill everything in earlier orders before starting to work on the next one. In drive through if someone order something that takes longer to prepare it would clog up the queue that someone might not be able to even start ordering. The lack of parallelism is very visible especially when you do a walk in order and order very few items right after someone who orders a lot, you will often get your order first, despite their orders start the preparations before yours.
I mean, the primary benefit of fast food is that you can swing by and get a prepared meal on your lunch break. You can’t really do that at a sit down place unless you order in advance. They lost the ‘fast’ part too, since they don’t want to pay the amount of people it takes to run their stores though. Now the only benefit they have going for them is their hours, and they’re slipping there for the most part, since most places are still running on reduced hours because COVID gave them the excuse to never bring their old hours back.
I’m not gonna look it up, but who recently bought Subway and is now cashing in on tanking it so they can sell the corpse?
If you ever watch CompanyMan on youtube, it’s like 90% of all “The Fall of [Company]” involves either going public and then rapidly expanding, or “acquired by private equity firm then died in 5 years”
Its like the saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
By far the worst one is always the private equity/leveraged buyout. It always ends in failure for the company.
It’s supposed to end in failure due to having all the money squeezed and sucked out of the company.
What happens to the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to the people making the buyout decision. If they can pad their wallets then who cares about what happens to the company?
The bread bought it. It’s not an in-bread operation.
I quit going to Subway when they changed their whole menu. I went and asked for a spicy italian, blank stare from the employee, “uh, that’s not on the menu”. I said “Okay” and left. The menu wasn’t structured to “make your own” thing not on the menu. Subway was never spectacular food but serviceable, quick, and fairly inexpensive. Not the case anymore, and the weird shit they’ve advertised lately looks awful. FFS, ad are supposed to make things look better than they are, so if these ads look better than the real thing, it must be dreadful irl.
I still get Italian BMT and the spicy… I think the guy you ran into was just new
No, they were (presumably instructed to be) really weird about orders, after they changed the menu. There’s a subway at work, I go 1-2/week, had been the same staff for long over a year when it happened. I asked for some chicken sub with a different cheese than the one on the menu, or something to that effect; was told I needed to get the ‘build your own’ to substitute.
After that silly nonsense, I realized you could do whatever customizations you want when ordering in the app +use coupon codes repeatedly.Yeah no, still never had that happen to me. They always ask what kind of cheese I want, any veggies, however I want it. I go to subway frequently, and many different locations. Try a different one.
Classic Zoot n Zorg moment
I tried to actually go to one about 2 weeks ago. 5 workers, and they said - “oh he’ll help you” and pointed to another worker. While the 4 of them stood next to the till gossiping about home life, and the poor dude just kept making Sandwichs for the online orders coming in. Only said hi to me once, after the 5th sandwich, I just told them I’m out of time and I’ll go. They thanked me for coming in. They’re just awful top to bottom. Bad corporate culture
Not defending Subway overall, the price increases are nuts. However that experience of yours is definitely an individual franchise problem, not a “corporate culture” problem.
Never in my life have I seen a subway with more than 3 working people in it. I haven’t ate it in years but more often than not it’s just 1 guy.
THEY WHAT?
I don’t even eat at Subway, but nearly tripling the price in one go? My gawd.
I go to Subway with an upsetting degree of regularity, but it’s the only place where I can get fresh vegetables as part of my meal in under 30 minutes. The cheapest footlong on the menu is the Spicy Italian (or whatrver their latest menu refresh is calling it) for $10.99. Any other sub is $11.99 and up.
Five years ago I could get a foot long spicy italian combo with chips and a drink for less than $10.
Lmao I unknowingly liked their cheapest sandwich best
You can get more reasonable prices per sandwich with coupon codes. For the ones near me, they almost always have a “FLBOGO” or “BOGOFTL” or “FTL1299” or similar variation to get two for the price of one. But YMMV and you have to be ok with leftovers if you’re eating alone.
It hasn’t actually been $5 in a long time. It was like $7 last time I went (a few years ago).
about 10 years ago subway replaced the ice cream shop at the local amusement park. the prices they had there were insane, and they didnt even have all the regular menu options. 20 something dollars for HALF a footlong. what a joke
They thought they could charge the same money as real sandwich places. Lol.
Do these companies not realize their whole business model is cheap food for broke people? I lived off of $5 footlongs when I was a student. There’s no way I could have afforded that with the prices they’re charging now. And now that I do have disposable income and could afford their food I wouldn’t go there anyway because there are way better options for the same price.
Taco Bell used to be a goto, then they tried to get too creative and half their stuff became a sloppy greasy mess. Now you can’t go and simply get 3 soft tacos and a drink for under $10 and they seem to change the menu every other week.
BRING BACK THE 2 MENUS AT THE DRIVE THRU SO I CAN DECIDE ON MY ORDER WHILE THE DOLT IN THE MINIVAN IN FRONT OF ME IS ORDERING FOR 12 PEOPLE!
I really really want to be on your side, Taco bell has gone crazy on the prices and I hate it.
But, on the other hand, it sounds like you haven’t even had the crispy cantina taco meal and that’s not a life I’d wish on anybody.
Start looking at the … “Welcome to Taco Bell will you be using the app?”
And holy hell is their app a piece of shit.
Yep. Tried to add points with my receipt the other day, and it refused to access the camera to scan the barcode, and refused to give me a keyboard so I could manually input the code.
The only saving grace they have right now is that they brought back a $7 cravings box meal. Filling and only $7.54 with tax.
Yep. Tried to add points with my receipt the other day, and it refused to access the camera to scan the barcode, and refused to give me a keyboard so I could manually input the code.
But at least it ignores your preferences and makes the stupid “bong” sound when you tell it not to.
Where are you? I just got on the app and 3 soft shell tacos and a large drink is $9.13 after tax. That’s still more than I would pay for that especially seeing as the build your own cravings box is only $6.48 after tax and comes with much better options. I seriously am flabbergasted when I read the prices people are saying they pay.
Where I’m at, the price for the boxes are minimum $8 or $9, most of the combos are $11-$15 before tax, and they change their menu so often that I can’t be bothered going there. 3 years ago the prices were a lot closer to what you’re seeing.
I used to go there pretty often, but with the prices going up particularly in the last few years and with the additional inconvenience of having to learn what their new gimmick of the week item is and what box or combo items they’ve removed to make space for it, I just can’t be bothered. Also because eventually I realized that there’s a local Mexican restaurant that sells bigger, better burritos for cheaper in a gas station closer to my work than Taco Bell is. Only downside is them not having a drive through.
I guess I’m thinking more of fast food places: After they got cheap food market, they had to keep growing so they tried to be semi fancy to convince people to go there instead of restaurants. It was back when people had more money / lower cost of living. They got too optimistic. Now we’re back to wanting cheap cheap cheap.
Back in high school, which coincidentally were my weed days, the state tax in NJ allowed us to do the 4.20 meal: JBC, small nuggets, small fries, small frostee. They were all off the dollar menu (which I understand isn’t a thing anymore), and came to 3.96, with 24¢ tax. It was a beautiful thing and honestly sold itself. If Wendy’s, or any fast burger joint, were to bring back a 4.20 meal, I have to imagine some young stoners having a giggle and ordering it. And then, the ingredients and their ability to tug on people’s addiction centers, do the rest of the work.
I think they’ve realized that they’ve successfully trained poor people to not know how to cook and then there aren’t any options left if they all band together.
I wonder if there’s software that makes pricing cartels easier to form now.
Banding together is supposed to be economically unstable because anyone who undercuts on price is supposed to capture the market.
Drug cartels can punish defectors with violence. Is there some new mechanism legal businesses are using to punish pricing cartel defectors? Maybe it’s lawsuits?
IMO, no sandwich on Earth is worth $14. Especially not one from SooubWay.
I disagree, there’s a sub place near me with a 16" sandwich with like 5 meats, 3 cheeses, and lots of toppings that costs about $14. The heft is noticable, even when I’m hungry I can only eat about half.
There are some high quality places out there, Subway has always been the McDs of subs. I feel they started to go downhill when they stopped cutting the v notch in the bread to stuff it full and just went with boring halves.
I will say to those thinking $5 should remain the price - we were okay with $5 subs a decade or more ago, but now asking more is too much? Inflation is a thing. $5 purchasing power in 1990 is now $12 in 2024. The argument shouldn’t be about the price increase, as it should have crept up this whole time. But the quality should have at least remained the same, and the workers fairly paid. The price of the sub is the least of the problems.
But the price increase kinda is a symptom of the underlying issue. For reference, the reason that subway subs were $5 for a long time was that the company was trying an advertising campaign to grow the brand, which it did amazingly well (honestly, far too well). However, those were not sold at a sustainable price, but whenever the company tried to raise the price it was perceived very poorly by the market. So they kept the price low for a long time, and eventually had to raise it but due to inflation (and decreasing the sub size to compensate for the low price before that), but the price increase was pretty drastic to most of the customers who often stopped going there.
In other words, the company kept the price down artificially to keep their stock price high, and foisted a lot of the actual costs onto the franchisees, of which they had tons. Which is obviously not a sustainable business model, and it’s why less people go to subway anymore.
They also allowed overcrowding. You could basically put a Subway right next to another Subway if you wanted. 3-4 in a single neighborhood. Corporate does not care if the franchisees make any money.
A footlong NY Italian at my local sub shop with like 4 kinds of meat and a ton of veggies on it costs $9. It’s better than subway in literally every way. The people who work there are chill and seem to like it too
Oh man, you’ve never had a good Rueben then. Good corned beef, a pile of kraut, swiss, fresh rye bread (or sourdough), and that thousand island and/or spicy mustard. Grilled up and served with a pickle spear and some fresh chips.
Making one is not cheap, though not a lot more than your typical burger. But, a 14 usd price is reasonable when you factor in labor. I’ve paid more than that for a truly great Rueben where the corned beef was made in house, and the bread came from an attached bakery. Completely, totally worth twenty bucks.
Our closest deli that’s like the kind of deli in bigger cities charges 15 and some change for their Rueben that comes with a pickle, potato chips, and a drink. I ain’t mad at that price even though it makes it a rare treat.
Which, I get you, you led off with IMO which means you’re speaking only for yourself, so I’m not saying your opinion is wrong, or trying to change your opinion! Just giving my opinion on the matter of expensive sandwiches for my own tastes.
If I could have the best burger I’ve ever had right in front of me right now, I’d pay ~$25 for it. The cost we pay for top-notch sandwiches is typically a search cost.
I’m willing to pay a decent amount for Schlotzkys tbh. But they’d have to exist in my area first.
I can either: A. Drive to fuckin’ Toledo Or B. Drive to Kentucky.
Why are fast food places charging premium prices for slowed down food with cheaper ingredients? If I’m gonna spend over $10 or over 10 minutes at a place you bet your ass it isn’t gonna be a fast food joint. It’s gonna be a place with real ingredients and an atmosphere that isn’t overflowing toilets.
Or at the very least it’s going to be an upscale fast food place. Church’s Chicken, not KFC
While I like Church’s Chicken better than KFC I definitely wouldn’t call them more upscale. In fact I’ve never seen a Church’s that wasn’t in the hood.
Yeah, I read that and thought “If this person thinks Church’s is ‘upscale fast food’, where do they normally go, soup kitchens?”
McDicks, so even lower than soup kitchens :P
But I have been informed that my local Church’s is unusually nice, they aren’t all like that
Heh. The only Church’s I know is pretty fancy; must depend on the area
Is that a nationwide thing? It feels weird over here, but yeah, it seems like a lot of the midrange/sit down restaurant small chains just never changed their prices.
The smaller restaurants kept their prices tracking actual inflation to maintain their customer base. Lately they have been enjoying increased business because of the nationals screwups.
The local Greek place $65.
The best taco truck in town is $55.
For $75 I can get my local family owned Thai place with leftovers for the next day.
DQ, McD, Subway, KFC, all run between $60-75.
For $70 I can even get my family chipotle and enjoy the guaranteed food poisoning a few hours later.
When your local chain restaurant/fast food joint starts going off-menu to entice people to come in, you know a business is struggling. Seeing Churros on the menu in a Mexican establishment is perfectly normal. Seeing Churros on the Subway menu is a bit alarming.
I think it’s pretty clear the Subway execs (or the executives of their parent/holding company) foresee a recession and are doing as much profit-taking as possible while there’s still time before the big crash hits and everybody tightens up their budgets.
Nah I think it’s far more that they’ve developed a reputation as cheap, everywhere, and mediocre then they raised the prices massively. I don’t know anyone who thinks “you know what I’m craving? Subway”. They used to have other niches but sub shops are common and I can get a better vegetarian option elsewhere and for cheaper.
I don’t think they can pull out of this tailspin unless they slash prices to the bone
Subway spent a long time and a lot of marketing money training their customers that a sandwich should cost $5 and taste fine. Not great, but fine. But then the doubled the cost and halved the quality. They spent years teaching customers to avoid the sandwich they now serve.
Little Caesars had a similar problem, but instead of doubling the price, they raised it $1. Cheap pizza for $5 is fine, and cheap pizza for $6 still feels fine.
My local Little Caesars sells the basic pizzas for $9.97 now. Crazy Bread went from $1.99 to $4.99.
Dang, really? Hot n ready’s are $6.50 here
Absolutely.
Look all around you and what you see in pretty much domain is large corporation wringing every drop of brand value they can from accumulated customer brand awareness and loyalty - from enshittification of pretty much everything Internet and of electronics from brands which were previously seen as a good quality-price balance to forced subscriptions (hi, Adobe) and even as in this case, store chains with well known brands in everything from consumer goods to fast food pushing prices up and/or quantity and quality low.
Sure, for many if not most this will trash those companies’ brands, but as the C-suite at those places have been taught in their MBAs, “by the time it blows up, I’ll be long gone and laughing all the way to the bank to visit all that money I made from bonuses and a golden umbrella”
Yeah they seem to think of “brand value” as loyalty akin to what people feel for a local sports team, and some brands do have that “hometown favorite” value. I know my hometown brand of potato chips definitely does taste like home. But also, they need to be thinking of it in a term that business ghouls can understand: professional reputation.
The organization of subway has a bad professional reputation. Its customers are unimpressed by its services in their transactions with it, they feel it offers a bad value proposition.
Businesses have gotten accustomed to the brand treadmill rather than just doing something well and being ok with the margins that provides. And if it isn’t an investment in growth a business should be able to reach that point where it finds stability and maintains it, providing stable profits.
I don’t know anyone that has ever eaten at Subway and said “damn, that was really good”. It’s more of “eh, I’m not hungry anymore”.
I absolutely love subway (not my favorite subs but definitely up there) the prices are just too high. They got greedy and it bit them in the ass
Seeing Churros on the menu in a Mexican establishment is perfectly normal. Seeing Churros on the Subway menu is a bit alarming.
Some of that is just regional. Seeing churros on the menu at a Houston Subway isn’t particularly alarming.
They have churros on my local subway menu, as well as a pizza, and a footlong pretzel stick.
We’re in New England…
For me it isn’t that churros are on the menu at Subway.
It’s that RIDICULOUSLY FUCKING HUGE churros are on the menuy at Subway.
If you are eating a foot’s worth of churro, you’ve eaten too much churro.
Meh it’s a stick that’s about a foot long and the diameter of a nickel.
Which is basically one big bar of sugar and carbs.
This is a fast food restaurant that serves sandwiches made out of entire loaves of bread.
I’m not saying Subway doesn’t also offer way too much of everything else too, but churros were what we were talking about.
Subway offers too much of everything.
But I will say the veggie patties are pretty tasty. They don’t attempt to replicate meat.
