US The McRecession hits fast food chains - America is dead.

Article / Archive
22 hours ago - Business
Nathan Bomey, Kelly Tyko

Call it the McRecession.

The big picture: Low- and middle-income consumers are increasingly shying away from fast-food restaurants like McDonald's, a sign that people are pinching pennies amid recession fears.

• The number of low-income consumers visiting U.S. fast-food restaurants was down "nearly double digits" in the year's first three months compared to 2024, McDonald's CEO Christopher Kempczinski said Thursday.
• Visits from middle-income consumers across the industry "fell nearly as much," he added.

Zoom out: Concerns about job losses and fears about price hikes from President Trump's tariffs have fueled what Conference Board senior economist Stephanie Guichard recently called "pervasive pessimism about the future."

• And that's translated into fewer people coming through the door at McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants.
• "Economic pressure on traffic has broadened," Kempczinski said. "I think we are seeing that people are just being more judicious about cutting back on visits."
• One way the trend is manifesting: People are skipping breakfast "or they're choosing to eat at home," Kempczinski said.

Threat level: Signs of a fast-food slowdown are spreading.

• U.S. comparable sales fell 3.6% at McDonald's, the company's worst showing since the pandemic.
• Starbucks' comparable sales declined 1% in the quarter, the coffee giant announced Wednesday, its fifth consecutive quarterly decline.
• Domino's Pizza said consumers are gravitating from more expensive delivery options to cheaper carryout.
• And Wingstop CEO Michael Skipworth flagged "a meaningful pullback in our business" in "specific pockets," including Hispanic customers and "lower middle income" consumers.

Meanwhile, data from Placer.ai, which analyzes customer activity, shows visits fell 1.4% across the overall dining segment in the first quarter, with quick-service and fast-casual chains seeing a 1.4% drop.

• Chipotle's comparable restaurant sales decreased 0.4% in the first quarter of 2025 — its first decline since COVID lockdowns in 2020.

Yes, but: The slowdown isn't happening everywhere.

• Taco Bell is on a roll. The Yum Brands chain posted a U.S. comp sales increase of 9% in its most recent quarter.
• Chris Turner, Yum Brands chief financial and franchise officer, credited Taco Bell's expansion of luxe value boxes as delivering "exceptional value across income levels, with the $5 Luxe box becoming a massive win with low-income consumers."

• Taco Bell's reputation for value, however, could also be exacerbating the trend for competitors, as consumers look to treat themselves at a lower cost. The chain is "well positioned to navigate this environment... with an opportunity to take share from higher-priced competitors," Turner said Wednesday.

What to watch: Restaurants will continue to focus on value menus, adding new items and limited-time offerings to bring consumers back in.

• Kempczinski said the launch of new chicken strips and the upcoming return of snack wraps should help McDonald's improve.
• McDonald's CFO Ian Borden said the company may adjust its current McValue offerings over time but that for the rest of 2025 will "continue to include everyday value meal deals starting at $5."

 

[Haramburger]

Why are Indians buying up the cheap food franchises?

The short and simple answer is immigrants can ride business margins white residents can't with tax breaks they get for being new business owners. They then change ownership to a trusted brown family member 5 or 7 years down the road to keep the tax breaks, because their family unit doubles as a bonded business org amongst themselves.

 

[OtherLastTrainHome]

this subject is near to a lot of others and the answer is ultimately the same for all of them. i was talking about the affordability of PC components to a few people and had this to say, and i also referenced fast food chains in this.

it [computing] hasn't been affordable for years and realistically, if tariffs have any impact on this (and they probably do, considering these are luxury goods), it's only temporary. that recent video they [Gamers Nexus] posted demonstrating how astonishing the price of a PC has become when contrasted against historical price-to-value ratio already proved how untenable the situation currently is. why is anyone buying now? especially when the latest games near-unanimously fucking suck ass and you don't need any of this new hardware because of it.

20+ years ago - and this is true in pretty much every field - a higher price indicated higher quality. now that's not really true anymore. in computing especially, whatever you paid was going to be the length of your dick in terms of power and capability, to use a vulgar euphemism. spend $100 on a GPU? purely low-power budget. spend $300-400? that was enthusiast grade. frankly, you can't even fucking order food anymore and expect to receive the goddamn thing with any accuracy. can't spend $10, $20 to get what you asked and paid for, why spend $100, $200 on meals for events, etc?

what's going on now is not entirely to do with the recession we've been in since 2008, but it does play a major part of course. eating out has just become too expensive for anyone to reasonably do it, and the ultimate defense against wasting money on fast food is to realize that the service and the quality all suck dick now outside of a few exceptions (Chik Fil-A, which has been touted many times already in this thread). just as the ultimate defense against buying overpriced and scalped GPUs is that almost nobody will get actual use out of the full power of that component and you also don't even need it to play the gorillion old games (emulator stuff included) that exist or indie games.

also i ordered from Waffle House recently on the way home from work and they forgot my sandwich and actual waffle. case in fucking point that everything just sucks. i immediately refunded, filed a business complaint (and left angry feedback) and will never patronize the chain again.

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

I went to a Chili’s last Wednesday with friends and ended up paying $57 for a burger and 2 beers. Also their ribs suck.

Holy fucking shit. I'd pay less for a burger and two beers (40 CHF) sitting in an actual restaurant in the centre of Zurich. You didn't sneakily include the tip in that price, did you?

 

[quaawaa]

Holy fucking shit. I'd pay less for a burger and two beers (40 CHF) sitting in an actual restaurant in the centre of Zurich. You didn't sneakily include the tip in that price, did you?

Chili's is an actual full-service restaurant.

Chili's charges $13 for a burger/fries combo and $3 for a Happy Hour beer for a total of $19 pre-tax and tip. Even using non-Happy Hour alcohol prices, there's no way it'd be anywhere close to $57. The only ways he could get that bill is if the bill was for his whole table or if he ordered expensive burgers (like their $18 double bacon cheeseburger) and beers.

 

[Soso]

I usually just buy groceries, cook a meal, eat a small portion, and then eat the rest of the meal for leftovers and bring it to work. Grocery prices have gone up, but that's also probably where I live always has the cost of living increasing. The only time I ever eat fast food is if I'm on a long trip and/or I forgot to bring something to eat. People are still crowding fast food lines though, and it'll take a lot for them to stop.

 

[The Hardest R]

This is largely a bipartisan issue because the model of charging the most amount of money for shitty food made with the cheapest ingredients possible while asking that you provide a generous tip has been going on for years and people are tired of it.

I had a Subway sandwich a little while ago and it tasted fucking weird. Shitty brown napkins, half the drink options were out of order, their chip selection was a lot more limited, and of course, a tip request at the end where the squat toad-looking LAHtina looked at me hoping the gringo would give her a nice tip despite slow ass service and having to repeat myself several times during the order. No fucking Dijon mustard either, even though it has been a part of their lineup for damn near 20 years.

Nah, I’ll just stick to making a better sandwich at home from now on, thanks.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

This is largely a bipartisan issue because the model of charging the most amount of money for shitty food made with the cheapest ingredients possible while asking that you provide a generous tip has been going on for years and people are tired of it.

I had a Subway sandwich a little while ago and it tasted fucking weird. Shitty brown napkins, half the drink options were out of order, their chip selection was a lot more limited, and of course, a tip request at the end where the squat toad-looking LAHtina looked at me hoping the gringo would give her a nice tip despite slow ass service and having to repeat myself several times during the order. No fucking Dijon mustard either, even though it has been a part of their lineup for damn near 20 years.

Nah, I’ll just stick to making a better sandwich at home from now on, thanks.

Subways are notorious for its cheap franchises, which leads to third-world tier management and operations, and you better hope that they throw out the moldy produce BEFORE it gets sliced up and put in the bins.

Out of brown mustard is precisely what shit stores do, they'll fill six bottles full of chipotle vinaigrette or whatever then don't have the more common sauces available. I remember that local management (which ran several stores--good managers basically got overridden by them, bad managers were placed in stores and had to beg other stores for workers since no one wanted to work there) hated tip jars but then expected employees to wait tables anyway.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Subways are notorious for its cheap franchises, which leads to third-world tier management and operations, and you better hope that they throw out the moldy produce BEFORE it gets sliced up and put in the bins.

Don't forget about the subway stink vent hat's inspired many oddly specific comics and memes over the last 2 decades.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Don't forget about the subway stink vent hat's inspired many oddly specific comics and memes over the last 2 decades.

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