Many people believe it’s an astounding $18 after a post on X of McDonald’s menu prices at a rest stop in Connecticut went viral and made national headlines. (Narrator voice: It’s not.)

Now, almost a year after the post, a top McDonald’s executive wants to set the record straight. In a recent letter, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said $18 for a Big Mac combo was the “exception” and not the norm across all 13,700 restaurants in the country.

The average price of a Big Mac in the US was $4.39 in 2019,” Erlinger said in his recent letter. “Despite a global pandemic and historic rises in supply chain costs, wages and other inflationary pressures in the years that followed, the average cost is now $5.29. That’s an increase of 21% (not 100%),” he added.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Went on a trip recently and we always stop by a McDonald’s for breakfast and holy crap, a freaking hash brown was almost three bucks.

    I get having to pay workers more but that’s just some bullshit price gouging there because there’s no way in hell what workers are still there are getting paid that much better in order to justify a the dollar hash brown.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      They also have less workers per store now as they employ tablets for ordering, I believe, and some cooking processes have been simplified or removed.