Fast-food prices way up the past decade. Low-income consumers are starting to crack.

[housecat]

Change in average menu prices for ten popular items over the past decade, per FinanceBuzz:

1. McDonald’s: +100%
2. Popeyes: +86%
3. Taco Bell: +81%
4. Chipotle: +75%
5. Jimmy John’s: +62%
6. Arby’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Chick-fil-A: +55%
7. Panera Bread: +54%
8. Starbucks, Subway: +39%

A little over a decade ago, Subway had their $5 footlong deal. You could get McD's hash brows for 2 for $1.

Today, a 5lb bag of potatoes is $3. You can buy 10 frozen hash brown patties for $3.50.

A McD's Quarter-Pound w/cheese meal costs $12. I could make this myself in 5 minutes with Rally's fries for $3.

Fast-food prices surged faster than inflation the past decade.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/y...inflation/

McDonald’s and other big brands warn that low-income consumers are starting to crack
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/30/companie...umers.html

$3 for a single McDonald's hash brown? Some customers are fed up and pushing back
https://www.ksl.com/article/50868966/3-f...shing-back

Having seen along the supply chain, I can absolutely rubber-stamp that it's profit margins along the supply chain, not just at the grocer. During the pandemic, you should have seen the prices for shipping. Out of this world shipping fees. Even now it's gone to "new normal" pricing.

Also in countries such as Canada, the tax is the real hidden creature, taxing everyone and everything at each step of the supply chain. Freight forwarders and clearance houses got dinged with that too. Customs agents. Warehousing. Supply chain risk management costs really went crazy too. Integration along the supply chains with big companies especially became a lot more prevalent, which dug into margins a bit too. A lot of times, depending on the food product, there are middle-men who do repackaging, relabelling, import/exporting, and so forth, and to the idle observer people ask why do we even need those people? It's the only way to protect the manufacturer from various risks, so they use middle-men, or want to align with culture/language/currency requirements. The only sometimes to enter and remain in a market is the use of middle-men. Oh yeah and the cost of fuel kills the consumer at every step along the way.

So yeah, in Canada, we are one of the higher tax and inflation countries and food here is always more expensive than are cousins to the south and has always been this way. Too many hands in the cookie jar.

Also I want to throw in that a lot of these high sugar merchants are going to get their due when they price themselves out of their own market. The cracks have been showing for awhile and it's coming more and more now.