Video by Sanya Dosani and Joey Yee
McDonald’s prices have doubled in the last ten years. The profits have gone mostly to shareholders, who got nearly $40 billion in dividends over the past decade while customers suffer and workers are underpaid.
TRANSCRIPT
SANYA DOSANI, MORE PERFECT UNION: I came to McDonald’s for a quick, cheap, and easy meal, but McDonald’s has changed a lot since the last time I was here. $5 for a medium french fry. You pretty much can’t get anything for less than $10.
My food took a lot longer than I expected. And while I waited, I noticed how boring and bland the restaurant looked. Remember when McDonald’s used to be fun?
DOSANI, AT THE TABLE WITH MCDONALD’S MEAL: Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Do you think that’s really a quarter pound of beef?
Only one pickle.
DOSANI, EATING QUARTER POUNDER: Honestly, that’s good
DOSANI, EATING FRIES: That slaps. Not going to lie, the [burger] is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.
Back in 2014, these were the average prices of some popular McDonald’s menu items. And here are the prices ten years later. Everything rose by at least 50 percent. The Quarter Pounder meal more than doubled in price. Over that same decade, prices for other consumer goods only rose 31 percent.
It’s not just McDonald’s. All fast food prices are way outpacing inflation.
And what are we getting for that increased cost?
To find out what’s really going on in the kitchens, I reached out to a former McDonald’s corporate chef.
MIKE HARACZ, FORMER MCDONALD’S CORPORATE CHEF: They are willing to serve not as good of a product because I can make more money and serve more people. Make it as cheap as possible so they can get more profit.
DOSANI: Fast food used to be cheap, filling, and obviously fast. But not anymore. So, why does fast food suck now?
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