Mcdonalds is pricey and it sucks. Damn it, man.
Cook at Home - Ideal with friends - share costs - socialize have a great time - eat well. Period
Or order delivery, and buy the same thing from 3 different places because all of them sell the same cheap frozen / deep fried crap that turns cold amd soggy by the time it gets to you
That’s Taco bell in India. Never had such expensive, shitty food before.
I’ve heard that Indian street food can be so unhygienic that a YouTuber almost got seriously ill after eating it. There are tons of videos showing Indian street food vendors where the food looks unsanitary and even dangerous.
How do you “ almost” get seriously ill?
more like it almost killed him.
If you’re local you know where to go but your immune system is also used to the baseline contaminants that exist. To eat street food as a traveler you risk a few days-weeks of stomach upset but after you get through that you’re usually ok for while.
India isn’t special for it, same concerns exist in any country that doesn’t have reliable clean water or well enforced food safety standards. If the FDA, EPA, and USDA aren’t fixed soon this will soon be true in the USA as well.
My brother once had an ice cream from a street vendor in Cambodia. Many locals were buying there so he figured he’d be okay. He ended up in the hospital for 2 weeks.
In rural Burma, I had one single sip of green tea offered by a monk friend. I was tired and wanted to be a gracious guest so I happily accepted … only later did I remember that the water for green tea is not brought to a boil. That single sip of tea cost me 9 days of shitting-my-guts-out misery in a third-world country without access to western medicine. I normally travel with Imodium (Loperamide) but it was illegal in Vietnam, because it is technically an opioid.
I’ve heard that Indian street food can be so unhygienic
True. But at least it’s cheap. Taco Bell in India is as expensive as a full dinner at a good restaurant.
unsanitary and even dangerous.
I mean yeah… That’s what you get when you visit/live in an unregulated, corrupt hellhole.
Lately, instead of picking up a fast food buyer and fries for $13, I’ve been going to Chili’s. They have a $10.99 special that is a REAL bacon cheeseburger, excellent fries, and a drink, and it even includes a salad or a cup of soup. With tax and tip, it’s $15.
The last time I went to 5 Guys, it was $24.50, and it wasn’t nearly as good.
They have a $10.99 special
$11.
The last time I went to 5 Guys
I stopped going to Five Guys unless it’s a kid’s birthday request.
Last time we went to Five Guys, kids got hot dogs, one plain, one with bacon, Wife got a burger, we got a regular fry and a cajun fry to share at the table and 4 softdrinks it came to $75, note, I didn’t even get myself a burger I got a drink and ate the fries.
For $10 more dollars, we can all go to Hibachi, walk out of there stuffed and have enough left for another meal.
$15 bacon cheese $10 hot dog $7 Fries $4 bottle of soda
They’re just insane.
Yeah, I wrote them off long ago, but I was recently pressed for time and they were right there. I was shocked at the price. Other than the fries, everything else is average, with the worst, cheapest buns in the biz.
The fries are legit, though. Classic Boardwalk-style fries, especially with malt vinegar.
I’ve been trying to convince the wife to authorize a restaurant grade fry cutter.
It’s super easy to make the fries if you have the gear
That’s McDonald’s and Burger King here in Costa Rica.
Hence the only burgers I eat from there are the chicken ones
Are they chicken burgers, or just chicken sandwiches?
Most of the world uses “burger” semi-synonymously with sandwich - basically anything where the main is a big hunk of meat
I’m not going to pretend it’s not wrong.
A burger, short for “hamburger,” has two critical components, to wit: a patty, and a bun.
Where did the ham go?
'twas elided
Go to Mexico. it’s still there.
There are plenty of Germans on Lemmy. Maybe we can just ask if any of them are from Hamburg so they can clear this up.
But doesn’t it come from German immigrants to the US? Seems like the more traditional beef patty in Germany is Frikadellen, which has extra stuff mixed into the ground beef, like chopped onion. And is not usually served on a bun.
I had to go looking, since I was always told the same, in re. German immigrants and blending food habits.
From Wikipedia:
Etymology and terminology The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany; however, there is no specific connection between the dish and the city.[4]By linguistic rebracketing, the term “burger” eventually became a self-standing word that is associated with many different types of sandwiches that are similar to a hamburger, but contain different meats such as buffalo in the buffalo burger, venison, kangaroo, chicken, turkey, elk, lamb or fish such as salmon in the salmon burger, and even with meatless sandwiches as is the case of the veggie burger.[5]
The term burger can also be applied to a meat patty on its own. Since the term hamburger usually implies beef, for clarity burger may be prefixed with the type of meat or meat substitute used, as in beef burger, turkey burger, bison burger, or portobello burger. In most English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a piece of chicken breast in a bun is a chicken burger. Americans would call this a chicken sandwich because the meat is not ground, whereas in other countries, anything with a bun is considered a burger and a sandwich uses other types of bread (sliced bread, baguette…).[6][7][8][9]
Burger is round, sandwich is elongated.
Sandwich is rectangle, sub is elongated
I’ve had long burgers and radially symmetrical non-burger sandwiches. A hamburger is defined by the minimum of a patty and a bun.
“fast” food? ha! try standing in line while a bunch of dickhead doordashers get to cut you in line. try walking into an empty establishment only to wait 20 minutes for a sandwich because of all the idiots that want to pay twice the price for a fucking meal.
Like a plague on places to eat these days. The drive in getting served over people in the restaurant was always bad but now it is a new sort of hell with the lobby filled up with dashers and the like all butting in front and such.
Real sad part is talking to a few of the non chain places, it seems like you don’t really get a say about if you want to use ubereats/doordash/skip etc. they just kinda list your place and then drivers start showing up and unless you want to fight each one it becomes easier to just go along with it. Only place I know of that made a fight out of it was a pizza place (with their own delivery drivers), it was a mess. They even had a large sign on the way in that they will at no time give an order to any delivery app service. But it was was like they could not read and just plowed in anyway, butting in line and doing the yell the order number thing out they do. Last I checked they started trespassing people and are trying to sue skip/doordash/uber.
I’ll say I live in a big city and have never once used Doordash/Uber Eats/any other exploitative meal delivery app for that reason. But even then you’re not safe.
I once placed an online order for takeout, ordered on the actual site for the restaurant (not any of those branded online order services hosted by the meal delivery companies), picked the option that said I’d walk over and pick it up, and then was told when I got there that Doordash already came by and grabbed it.
I then get a call on my phone from a Doordash driver asking where I live, because it wasn’t included with the order for some reason (gosh I can’t imagine why that would be). After spending 5 minutes explaining that I would not give them my address because I was at the restaurant and never ordered delivery, they show up 10 minutes later and hand me a cold bag of takeout.
Amazing service.
That sounds like a real outlier. Never had anything like that happen on a pickup order.
It’s usually not that messed up, but yes, some restaurants do delivery through DoorDash/Uber. I’ve had that happen at multiple places: get excited that a restaurant offers delivery but then cancel when I find out it’s uber eats.
Outlier maybe, but definitely something that only happened because of the fact that delivery drivers are allowed to walk right up to wherever delivery orders are kept and take whatever is there with no questions asked.
Um, no, that’s the restaurant who flagged your order for delivery. Not the drivers fault.
please tell me you got a refund and ate elsewhere
I’m a fairly nonconfrontational person so I just took my cold food without argument and heated it up again at home. The restaurant at least comped part of the bill by way of apology.
sounds like you might be more of the google review type…
Can’t say I’ve ever left reviews online, either. Not looking to shame or name drop a struggling restaurant, just to commiserate about the flawed and exploitative system of gig labor.
i assumed it was a bigger chain-type restaurant. the owner would probably actually appreciate a kind call to let them know what happened.
edit - like, a call where you say something like ‘sorry, i’m not calling to complain, but something weird happened the other day that might bother some of your other customers if it happened to them’
sounds like they’re just trying to figure out how to slot all the uber-important orders into their workflow.
I would have made them remake it, since they let someone run off with my food.
Sounds fun. Maybe I’m missing something but I wouldn’t expect a local restaurant to have rolled their own takeout backend. Are you actually seeing places that do? The branding might be subtle, but I’d be really surprised if they weren’t using a canned service.
They’re mostly contracted services, but I meant more that it wasn’t the services managed directly by the big food delivery companies like Grubhub/Uber Eats/Doordash etc.
If I don’t order through Doordash, I would expect no involvement from a Doordash driver whatsoever.
Yeah I go to the food court inside my local Asian grocery store instead. $12 gets you 2-3 proteins and 1 side. And they put so much food they have a hard time closing the bento takeout containers and you can technically split it into 2 meals. More filling and healthier than a burger and fries at the same price.
Congrats. You just explained the problem of the West using a food analogy.
I discovered one of these food courts inside what I thought was a medical building. Everyone there was Asian so you know the food is legit. Im in Canada and $15 gets me a packed container of food overflowing. It costs almost $20 with tax to go grab a whopper meal. There’s also an Afghan place near me that will give you a big container filled with rice and salad, a soup container filled with Rajma masala and a side of naan for $8
There’s a burger commercial in my country where a guy is pleasantly shocked to learn his burger is. ONLY $5. $5 for one a la carte burger is somehow supposed to make me say “oh that’s cheap!” All it does is remind me that they used to cost $2 five years ago.
All it does is remind me that they used to cost $2 five years ago
Hey, but at least your pay also went up 150%!
I have a local burger joint at which I can still get a $2 cheeseburger. It’s plain and everything is an up charge but that’s fine. A whopper or Big Mac clone is some $4.50, so like, it’s still pretty cheap.
However, they have no seating, and it’s an old ice cream shop so just a big kitchen and a tiny indoor order/pickup window and 2 benches. And there’s always a massively long line. Takes easily an hour to get fast food there during peak, cuz nobody goes to the local depressed millennial McDonald’s (one of those sad gray ones)
My local one will hook you up too. They throw in extra sides for waiting an insignificant time or give you the last few of something if it’s getting close to closing.
There’s one of the problems. I don’t need enough food for a family of four. I need you to give me an appropriate amount of food for one human being for $6.
Asian food is the type of cuisine that somehow tastes just as good when reheated the next day. I don’t force myself to finish everything in one sitting and always take home leftovers. Obviously if you don’t have the means to store and reheat food, this won’t work.
you can technically split it into 2 meals.
The Chinese take-out by me goes for $14-18 dollars but you can easily split it into 3 meals. The only problem is I can’t order my favorite dish because it’s so good I end up eating all those 3 meals at once.
My local burger, taco, and sub shops are half the price of the international chains, plus the food is better and the staff are paid more. Shop locally every time you can
Apparently chili’s is doing some meal deal where you can get a 1/4lb burger, fries, and a drink for around $10 and I believe you can order to pickup from those places.
You hear that fellas?
$10 for a quarter-pound of meat.
This is the realest meme I have ever seen.
Prices have definitely gone way up, but the only way you’re paying $25 for fast food is if you’re getting it doordashed, and if you’re doing that, you are the problem.
On my birthday a couple weeks ago I was looking at getting two nugget meals from McDonalds for me and my roommate. It wasn’t delivery, was pick up in the store. Was with a coupon.
$23.
Nah bro. Shit just expensive now.
I mean that’s for two people. So your meal cost was half of that.
I got the value one on a coupon and it was still half that.
My point still stands.
I have no idea why you’re trying to argue that fast food isn’t expensive anymore when it just is lol
Not saying it’s not expensive, nor am I saying it’s worth the money. Just saying there’s a big difference between $12 and $25. And that people who are willing to way overpay to get shit food doordashed really fuel the low standards in delivery food.
The first time my usual Taco Bell order cost $25 instead of $15 I said “How much?? Are you sure??” He sheepishly said “ Yeah… we raised our prices because of Covid. Do you want to cancel your order?”
It’s not going to go back down.
A Costco hot dog+soda is still $1.50, and good.
Steak and Shake is still pretty cheap too, and darn good.
Cheap fast food is still out there… if you know where to look. But it’s definitely not McDonalds, Chick-Fil-A or any of the giga chains.
McDonald’s has gotten a little better if you order just right. They’ve added buy one get one for $1, and if you use the app you can pretty much use an app deal or reward every time you order. But there are still items that are expensive and don’t have deals, so sticking to the cheaper items limits your menu.
Steak and Shake went all in on the MAGA grift. Their official Twitter page posted that they would be only using beef tallow from now on and they had several fucking Teslas in the image.
They have several posts like this
Well fuck, looks like I won’t be getting more steak and shake seasoning. Not even worth stealing it off the table if they’re shitbirds.
In & Out is still cheap, but the line is regularly all the way around the block where the place is at every location, so it’s hard to say it’s fast food.
They’re also not in a lot of the US or in international markets.
Urgh I can’t argue about the price and quality of their burgers but man it feels bad to support the people that run it. They’re big time conspiracy MAGAts 🤢
Well fuck… Can’t have shit 😩
Yeah, prices went up and the quality went down. The best thing to do is stop buying there. As multiple people already pointed out, you can get a lot more and better food for 25 bucks.
The fast food chains forgot that they aren’t actual restaurants. The customers have to remind them. Aaaaaaaand that’s the problem.
I bought a single Big Mac in rural nowhere the day before yesterday. I expected to pay about 4.50. Nope. Almost 7 dollars. 6.80 for single, cold, dry, wilted ass lettuce, dry ass cheese, sloppily made burger. I waited outside for nearly half an hour for it. Girl came to my window and said, “what did you order?” I told her and she still handed me a bag with a 4 piece nugget and a small fry. I had to go in and tell them they got it wrong, show my receipt which was stuck on the bag, then wait another 15 minutes for that cold, yucky sandwich.
The person who ordered the nuggets either left without looking or decided to say “fuck it”, because they didn’t come back in with me.
I would have done that, but I paid 7 bucks for the the shit.
That is it for me.
I don’t get mad when people make mistakes, and I wasn’t mad when all that happened. The only thing that made me mad was the price.
McDonald’s can kiss my ass. A few more dollars and a short wait and I could have got a banging ass meal just down the road at the noodle joint.
It’s the Satanic pursuit of endless profit growth that has driven these companies to Hell. For decades, they focused on expanding the number of stores. But eventually you hit a wall. Eventually the country is saturated, and marketing can only convince people to eat so many burgers.
In a sane world, this is when companies would be content with their current size. Congrats. You won capitalism. Good job. Now just maintain your current size and pay out handsome dividends forever. No need to keep trying to grow.
Well, that’s not good enough for Satanic capitalism; the growth needs to come from somewhere. So they have to start slashing quality and raising prices. It’s enshittification/late-stage capitalism. When you max out growth, all that’s left is to raise prices and cut quality. Ultimately this does destroy a business, but Satanic capitalists only care about short-term concerns.
It’s a bummer.
Like, all around.
When I was a kid, going to town was an event. We’d head down to the local hardware store which stocked NES and SNES games for us kids, had a section for toys and everything. Nothing fancy, just water guns and action figures. My mom actually talked the guy into stocking Nintendo games so we didn’t have to travel two towns over to get them. We’d leave there and my mom would take us to Speedy’s for a haircut. (They recently tore his old building down. I hated to see it). Then we’d walk down to the fabric shop so my mom could buy some stuff to make curtains and things. Once we were done there we’d go down to the little grocery store, the owner always gave me and my brother a lollipop and a dollar bill. Then we’d go from place to place browsing and window shopping.
Walmart ended all of that when it came to my town. People fought it for a long time and finally compromised and let them build on the highway.
I liked capitalism before it got like this. When people owned their towns and local businesses.
It gets worse, actually. On top of everything, those big box businesses pay less people less money to work there, cost more, and pay less in taxes to the point that it actually costs cities money to have them. The cost of maintaining infrastructure for a single business in such a massive parking lot with nothing else far outweighs the tax revenue. The buildings aren’t designed to last more than 10 years, either, so they can’t be repurposed long term without tearing down and rebuilding.
Big mac has always been a scam.
It has the same amount of meat as a mcdouble. They’re literally just selling you bread.
https://youtu.be/QoBhGInCDRg TLDW These guys say no. But watch it just for the accents.
Interesting video. I’m glad others have realized how similar the two burgers are.
When comparing the value of the two, I always look for what it costs the business to make rather than how much satisfaction it provides to the customers. That’s a great way to identify if people are getting scammed without even realizing it.
Soda and fries, for example, are total scams. They cost the company pennies while the customer pays dollars. But what’s a meal without fries and a drink? And businesses bank on that.
Same thing for a Big Mac. Most people say “it’s the mac sauce,” but you’re still getting the same amount of meat as a mcdouble with some shitty lettuce, more bread, and that sauce. The only thing that really costs the company money is the meat. You get the same amount of meat in a McDouble as Big Mac, but end up paying twice the price.
It’s a scam, even if people say the Big Mac is still better.
The question was if a mcdouble like a big Mac was the same thing, and through a taste test these guys said no. Not price, taste.
What question?
Seriously?
Don’t worry about answering though, I realized conversation with you is pointless. To you everything is a scam. And then you play this stupid game.
They thought they tapped out the fast food market and had to attract restaurant goers.
