The dude that never went to in-n-out
Behold the superior hamburger, ye mighty, and despair:
In-n-out is mid and their fries are like cardboard.
Yes, but to be fair, it’s peak mid. Most other chains do a worse job on burgers, and to do better, you have to go substantially upmarket.
Name better fast food at a comparative price.
Five guys.
Lmao 🤣 can’t take this guy seriously after this
Five guys is triple the price if not more.
Not in the West Coast. Both are about ~7 for the base burger and cap out at about ~12 for the highest menu item without extras.
50 USD for 2 people to eat at five guys. Case closed
…about $30, you mean. I mean if you’re trying to go for 2k+ kcal per person you’d hit 50+,but a normal person would have a hard time eating more than 15$ of five guys.
Ah yes, Five Guys. Where the fries turn into a pile of greasy mush if not eaten within the first five minutes your order is ready. But you’ve completed that task, you’re now full-up on fried potato, but now your burger is cold or at best half eaten. Nobody should have to eat with the gusto of a professional contestant just to make the most of things. It’s a meal that conspires against itself, every single time.
If you skip the fries, the burgers are actually pretty good and can enjoy it at any pace.
/rant
I’m sorry you’re too used to frozen preserves potatoes from Sysco or other manufacturers of potato-like rectangles to appreciate real fries.
Fresh-cut, single-cooked fries are the worst kind. Soft, greasy, unsatisfying.
Their burgers are bomb AF, I’ll admit that, but my two complains from them are 1) they’re small, we’re used to big Whataburgers here so I practically have to get two of them and 2) their fries, yes it’s oversaid but their fries are just different and not always in a good way. Though I will say they do taste better if you get a salt packet and pour it on.
Learn to cook. Honestly. When you know what you’re doing you can make simple and nutritious meals for a fraction of what you’d pay for this junk food.
People just dont know how to cook. Its an unpopular take these days but with the cost of living I cant help but look at how some of the people I know eat and think “Y’all could use some fucking austerity”. Everything is pre-made, pre-prepped, and sometimes pre-cooked.
Forget simple and nutritious. I can make you the filthiest nastiest food coma inducing double bacon cheeseburger in about the time it takes most people to make it to and through the drivethrough, and probably for less than you would spend on fuel. The less said about how much better my fried chicken is the better.
A lot of people don’t have the time or the energy to cook because they are being ground down by their shitty jobs. It’s no wonder so many people turn to processed food even if they don’t eat fast food.
Oh I know, for some people it isnt a choice. Thats why I prefaced it with “Some people I know.” because I know their circumstances.
One specific coworker in particular. If you’re stressing about your car payment, you dont have money for doordash. GO PICK IT UP YOU LAZY BASTARD THATS WHAT THE CAR IS FOR!
This was my exact thought. If you frequent fast food 2-3 times a week, you can substitute meal kits and have fresh cooked food for the same cost and time it takes to leave the house. Once you’ve mastered kits, everything becomes more apparent in recipes, and the world is your oyster.
+ it doesn’t need to be complicated. You only need a few ingredients and can buy certain pre-made things like crumbed fish or chicken. If you do it right the first meal takes 30 mins, then eating the same thing again in the next few days should only take 5-10 mins.
There’s little hacks for certain foods too if you can’t cook worth much or don’t want to bother to. For example I don’t want to bother with cooking a chicken, so I’ll go get one hot off the rotisserie chicken counter at Walmart or HEB. $6 for a whole ass chicken already hot cooked and ready to go, take it home and shred it. If it’s hot the skin and legs taste good as a snack of itself while you’re processing it and you can hand shred the breast / thighs / etc and save it for using in meals. It’s how I make quesadillas or chicken alfredo really quickly.
Exactly. Take three main ingredients and use that as a base, or keep it like that. For example: rice + tofu + tomatoes. Another: couscous + chickpeas + green beans. Simple, quick, easy, and nutritious. Add some more flavour with herbs, spices, soy sauce, etc
Me, limping my ass into a McDonalds for the first time in forever: “I’ll have 20 nuggets, no meal.” (expecting 5$, or something close to it since it had legitimately been a while)
“Yeah, that’ll be 12.47”
The fuck???
I don’t go to fast food often, I walked into a McDonalds for the first time in maybe 1yr +? They had the kiosks for self ordering, I looked at the prices and “deals” and decided that the cost/experience ratio was just not worth and just left. I can go to a restaurant or cook myself for those prices (and I did, cooked enchiladas).
It doesn’t seem affordable/worth it even for a one-off now
The fuck
Don’t forget about the “meat” wafers on the “burger”.
And the lines show it. I remember the single drive-throughs being backed up around the building and them putting in the dual-ordering drive-throughs to handle the traffic. There are never more than 2-3 people in line these days and there’s almost no one inside. I get it, they’re property banks these days.
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I’ve officially stopped going to McDonalds. Their prices make zero sense, and their food quality has dropped to incredible lows.
Only desperate, dumb, or wealthy folks eat at this place in 2025.
$17.99 for the 20 pc. In Canada. $10.79 for a 10 pc. I about shit when I immigrated here and realized nuggets were off the table. I can’t imagine ordering that and picturing one dollar every time I pop one into my mouth. My wife buys me a ten piece for my birthday every year since I won’t buy them myself out of protest. Also, my kid is old enough now to finish her 4 pc. Happy Meal, so I don’t get to scavenge for uneaten morsels like I did before. It’s tragic.
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RIP Stalinwolf
Where in Canada are you? Here in BC, the prices are quite different from what you mentioned.
Just eat real chicken at that point…
And yet people keep going. And why? Because those companies hire people with psychology and chemistry degrees to ensure they do. They play every psychological trick in the book to keep people coming back. And as much as anyone here (me included) think a burger from McDonald’s is shit, there are people, a lot of people, who feel like they just can’t live happily without their regular dose of Big Mac.
And, of course, McDonald’s has used those psychological tricks to convince such people that McDonald’s cares about them.
The whole thing is sick.
I mean, I can get a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s for under $3. It’s pretty good for that price range and accessibility. I’m not about to claim they give a fuck about me though lol
Honestly, it’s been a great help reducing take out. It’s such a gamble, I’d rather spent nothing on a sure thing (even if it’s boring) than nearly $40 for a meal I may not even finish.
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I’m trying to get myself together too (though not nearly as impressive as your method). I’m writing down everything I spend, from a soda, or groceries, to rent. I quickly saw I was spending, like, to the penny of my check, and saw I wasted a good $200 on just bullshit. I’m trying to put on my big girl panties and get it together. Whenever I saw no to something, I’ve been putting it in a savings account. Like, “eh, I can make dinner at home.” Okay, then that $15 for the cheeseburger that you were okay with is now going into savings.
My goal is to end this year without debt. School, credit card, all of it. Tired of it lol
That’s an impressive level of financial responsibility, nice job
- Bump up your employer’s withholding by 5%
- Get that overpayment back from the IRS
- Immediately dump that into a retirement thing that reduces taxable income; like, same-day
- Next year you have another 5% windfall and a little more back from the retirement contribution. Put both back into same deal
- Repeat forever
- Slow win
Why would I give the IRS an interest free loan? Taking that same 5% from your paycheck directly and setting up an automatic transfer to a high-yield savings account or an IRA each month would give you better dividends over the same period of time.
When I can buy like a large 5 top pizza for as much as a single fast food combo, i know which I’ll choose.
Pizza is also ridiculously expensive where I live. For something that is comprised of almost entirely dough, cheese, and tomato sauce, it’s kind of criminal that some places are charging $20 or more for a large pie. It probably cost them $1.50 worth of ingredients to make when you factor in bulk pricing.
Where I’m at it’s definitely very restaurant dependent. Papa Racist’s (Papa John’s) and Pizza Butt (Pizza Hut) I avoid like the plague because their decisions have been jack up the price and nosedive the quality. Meanwhile Little Ceasar’s is doing a $6 lunch combo and most pies I get there are usually $6-10.
I get it it’s Little Ceasar’s, but I got one thing to say to the LC haters
lmao true, I think Little Ceasars is actually good for the value. The $5 hot and ready box was an almost unbeatable deal.
I really prefer Domino’s, but their prices are outrageous so I don’t go there anymore. If I’m going to pay a shitload of money for pizza, I get a whole New York Style pizza so I can really enjoy it. Might start making my own now though, tbh. How hard could it be?
Really it’s not that hard, I’ve started making it myself. Hardest part is getting ingredients together and following recipe for the dough. Literally just flour, a packet of yeast, water, oil, a few other common items most kitchens should already have if you cook other stuff. Then the pizza sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni which I already buy made from the grocery store.
Check chatgpt for recipe suggestions, figure out how much dough you need and scale the recipe accordingly, make it and go. Compared to LC I’m barely breaking even though, their deal is just too good lol. But outside of that it’s fun to make at home and I prefer that now over frozen pizzas.
Yeah the rise in pizza prices has been disappointing in my area. Unless you’re getting just a plain pie, you’re gonna spend at least $20 for like a medium pizza.
There are so many goddamn places around here too, that there has to be like a pizza cartel or something, setting the price lol…
We got 2 kids meals at Culver’s and ate for $15. We are in 60s and it was enough food for us, and on the plus side it included ice cream!
Small McDouble combo is like $5.80 in Canada right now. Shit’s almost cheaper than groceries.
If you have a Braum’s nearby you can get a bomb-ass burger with two quarter pound patties, crinkle cut fries, and drink or shake for about $9.
But you probably don’t have a Braum’s around unless you are in the US and in one of like two shithole states.
I switched to mostly cooking for myself sometime last year, really just trying to save money, but I feel significantly less fatigued day to day and more focused and don’t wake up with random stomach pain anymore.
I’ve done that most of my adult life and yeah even just pasta with jarred sauce is so much cheaper, better, and healthier than fast food.
Your next big level up may be realizing that exercise doesn’t suck nearly as much as the feeling of being out of shape
$25
What’d he get, a whopper with no drink or side at Burger King?
In my days, you got a week’s worth of calories for $3.50
In my days you could buy 420 chickens for $0.69.
Nice.
I got a bacon double cheeseburger, large fry, large drink at a Hardee’s this week and it cost damn near $18. It was “okay.”
And half the time it’s not even that fast anymore either.
Might as well order a burger from an actual restaurant, to go, for the same amount and pick it up on the way. Half the time they’ll even bring it to you curbside.
The Burger King closest to me once had a 20 minute line to wait another 15 minutes for the food.
“Fast food” is still relatively cheap in Japan, and me and my son like the taste of Burger King, but that was ridiculous.
And it wasn’t even a staff issue, there were eight people back there running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
double 1/3rd pound burger? off the regular price menu, upsized with curls. ya. that’ll be pricey for what you get.
next time do the ‘little’ double cheese in the ‘bag’ special. 2 burgers, fries, drink for like six and change.
Buy frozen chicken nuggies/pizza and bake it in the oven
Dude it’s insane. I don’t understand how the hell these places stay in business anymore when the quality still sucks ass and it’s all so expensive now. Like even taco bell, who used to be the king of cheap, costs a fuckton these days.
☁️🌈CORPORATE✨PROFITS🌈☁️
It’s an addiction for a lot of people.
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It’s become a habit for many people. Cooking is a really difficult habit to (re)learn. It’s possible though and good meal prep is very convenient on long days at work.
I just hate cooking. I cannot stand it. It takes so much effort and you have to clean all the mess you made (even cleaning as you go sucks). And then you end up with something that may or may not pan out. And if you’re trying to meal prep then you have to eat the same meal for the whole week which I hate also.
If this was the only thing you’d ever have to do, fine. But the majority of the rest of our time is spent at work or sleeping. We have few precious hours where these things aren’t the case. I hope this doesn’t make me sound too much like an asshole, but I’m fortunate enough to purchase things like pre-prepared foods and get takeout a couple of times per week. So I take advantage of that because I don’t want to spend my few moments of free time slaving away over a stove or cleaning the mess of pots and pans and cooking utensils.
Another this about cooking when you live alone…a lot of perishable foods can only be bought in somewhat larger quantities and then they go bad before you use them all up. I tried to make a recipe out of a cookbook several months ago and I was frustrated at how many things I had to buy a large thing of when I only needed a very small amount for the recipe. Ended up with a lot of food waste.
You can always ask the butcher to get you a smaller piece of meat. You can also separate pieces of meat and freeze part.
If produce is by weight, you can break the package to be smaller. Even things like squash can be cut in half (ask the produce people, places like Aldis will not do this).
Buy canned and frozen veggies as much as possible, they last longer. They won’t be as tasty, but will reduce your food waste.
Cook larger portions and freeze the leftovers and eat them in a week or two.
As far as spices, dishes, etc. look at them as “investments” cause you won’t be using them all on one meal…
Meat is actually the easiest one because you can just freeze it like you said. Powdered spices are also a complete non issue. It’s fresh produce that I struggle with.
But for example, the recipe I tried called for…
Jasmine rice - could only find it in a whopping 5 lb bag which was ridiculous for a solo person who rarely ears rice. I know rice keeps, but since I don’t at all like to cook, it was very excessive. Even if I were to have made a larger quantity of the meal or make it multiple times, I still would have an insane amount left over.
A clove of fresh garlic - I know you can get powdered garlic or garlic in a jar, but people seem to say that it doesn’t at all work the same, so I wanted to try it the way the recipe wanted you to. So I had a shitton of cut up garlic left over because I could only find whole garlic bulbs at that particular grocery store if I didn’t want to go canned or powdered. Can you even freeze a portion of garlic?
A portion of whole fresh ginger - again same issue as the above problem I had with fresh garlic. Only this one was even worse because ginger rarely present in any of the foods I eat
Etc. for a lot of the ingredients for that recipe.
Yes, I get that you can do some complex puzzles and math to figure out how to use all of these ingredients in different meals without wasting the excess, but that is absolutely NOT for me. That’s a whole additional ordeal and one of the many reasons I hate cooking. I don’t want to have to perform an elaborate game of ingredient/meal chess to avoid significant food waste when I’m grocery shopping. I do enough work at my job and there are still plenty of other annoying tasks to keep up with like cleaning and laundry.
The point is I don’t want to look at any of these as “investments”. That is is an insane amount of work to put into something I hate.
Where are you shopping? Only having a 5lb bag of jasmine rice is weird.
Just use powdered instead of the fresh herbs. I would consider doubling up on most spices if you are using powdered.
Garlic and ginger both can be frozen. They also last a good while, so you can keep them in your fridge
None of these problems mean you have to resort to buying fast food though.
You can buy things like crumbed chicken tenders that last over a week in the packaging and take 15 mins to cook in an air fryer. Mix some mayo and hot sauce, steam some veg and you’ve got a cheaper, healthier meal than most fast food, in about the same time it takes to drive through and order.
That actually makes up a decent amount of what I eat already. The majority of my diet comes from the frozen food section at the grocery store. I get both the prepackaged dinners and also the precooked meats and “steam in bag” veggies you’re talking about. But on days where I don’t want that, I get takeout as a treat. Most often, I actually order food delivery instead of fast food, but I get fast food now and then too. I’ve actually got into the habit of going to the chick fil a near me because it’s literally a 5 minute walk and they have a good salad. McDonald’s seemed like they stopped selling salads some years back for whatever reason.
One of the points of my previous post is that I don’t care about the cost though because I’m fortunate enough to not be scraping by. I don’t get this takeout or fast food every day, but it doesn’t bother me financially to do it a couple times per week. Plus, sitting in your car listening to music and browsing your phone while someone prepares food for you is hardly a comparison to putting together something yourself. The time might be the same, but the effort is significantly lower which is the point.
Fair enough. I’m not scraping by either. I just choose to vote with my wallet because that’s capitalism.
Most times I buy fast food these days (few times a year) I just feel ripped off, because I know I’m paying extra just for shareholders; not for actual value.
Yes, I fully relate with this as if you spoke from my heart. Agreed on all points, haha.
I do cook, kind of have to when you have kids. But I definitely do not enjoy doing it. Especially because I’ll slave over a new dinner idea and my kids will just refuse to eat it.
My friend with kids also talks about this. She is like I work so hard to cook and even make it simple for them but they still refuse to eat it half the time lol
I’m gonna agree that cleaning sucks ass, as does the time of it.
I made do by usually having to have something stimulating my dopamine-addicted ADHD ass while I’m washing dishes. Youtube documentary video, podcast, whatever is at least 30 minutes so I can just grind thru. Upgrade the dish tools as well, I really like these ikea dish brushes so much more than a sponge because I feel like I can actually clean with it and not constantly go through sponges, and replaced the flip top dish soap with one of those squeeze bottle ones. Big secret is you can refill those with whatever you want, you don’t have to buy a new one when you run out.
Yes there is still the time factor with cooking, but I like to cook enough that I can make 2-4 servings so it’s more like cook once and minimal work for the reheating. Also as for the time, idk how it is in your area, but where I’m at ever since COVID drive thru and in store times suck ass now for ordering. If you’re on an hour lunch break or on the way home where I’m at it always takes them 30 minutes or even longer to get my order ready from ordering to out the lot. At that point, I might as well just go home and cook the damn thing myself, that’s what set it for me.
Lastly for food waste, a few things learning to change how much you make so that you “use up” the materials is helpful. Same with freezing things, turns out most things can be frozen and thawed with minimal change to the item. For example I now buy bacon in a bulk pack but split it up into bags of 4 slices, keep all in freezer except one. Now I would only have four slices going bad instead of the whole package. A few other things I do is sometimes dried herbs / seasonings in a shaker are better than fresh ones that will go bad, learn what you use less of so you buy less (like I only buy eggs in a six pack because I don’t go through enough), etc.
Stick with easy meals. I really want to make a cajun red beans and rice sometime, but I looked at the list of what I need and said fuuuuck that. I’ve got a few easy to make items that I like to rotate through: homemade pizza, mac and cheese and hot dogs, got frozen burger patties and a george foreman, burritos with ground beef beans and canned hatch green chile, etc. I also get my groceries delivered, it helps me time and money wise because I’m not shopping in the moment and only buying what I need, and now the whole process of grocery store shopping that I hate is gone. No more traffic to the store, no parking lot spot searching, no walking around the whole store and dodging slow people stopping in the middle of the aisle to have a conversation, no bullshit line for checkout or receipt checks and packing / leaving. Now it’s literally just order only what I need and it shows up at my door.
I do like the idea of “take home meals” though, sometimes that just hits the spot I get it. For me sometimes I’ll do that and just get some store made chips and queso and fuck it I’m eating that while being a couch potato that night. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good enough :)
I don’t mind cooking, I just hate coming up with a dinner plan for the whole week. I’ve begun watching cooking videos on instagram to help motivate me. I do wish there was an alternative to instagram, but so far it’s the best.
What’s up with the price of Chinese food too?
A no frills takeout for my family of 6 with the 4 kids splitting two entrees, and it was still $100
Everybody being mean to you, but I ate at the same Chinese joint all my life. Chicken lo mein special was 6 bucks for most of my life.
I ordered the same special a few weeks ago and it was nearly 20 bucks.
After covid the restaurant went downhill as far as cleanliness goes too. For a couple years you’d call in your order and grab your food from a table blocking the door. They only take cash and they trusted the public to pay and then reach into a basket to collect their change. That meant a lot to me so I ate there pretty often.
Once they opened back up though, I went in and the floors didn’t look like they’d been mopped the whole time. I thought, “maybe people were excited to come back and that’s why it’s so dirty.”
Nope. Still hasn’t been mopped.
Maybe don’t buy seventeen egg rolls
Price of eggs smdh
family of 6
$100
Go figure.
4 entrees and a side for $100 is supposed to be normal for takeout?
No, it’s still possible to get that for under $50 in my part of the US
When I was in high school, we’d split a gram of weed four ways and go to Wendy’s for the $4.20 meal. For less than ten bucks, you got stoned, a junior bacon cheese, four nuggets, small fry, and a small chocolate frosty. This was in the mid oughts so not that long ago!
The mid oughts was a different world, hundreds of years ago.
Y’all oughtta know the mid oughts were a lit time to behold.
