Payed âŹ6.40 in France for a "Big Mac" that's smaller than a McChicken
Edit: To answer "Why McDonald's?" Every time I travel outside of the United States, I like to compare McDonald's from that country and see if the quality is indeed better.
After this experience, my "try out McDonald's" experience in other countries has likely ended.
In Australia McDonaldâs is surprisingly good quality. I mean itâs still mass market fast food but compared to the absolute trash McDonaldâs you get in the USA itâs a huge step up. If you are on a road trip and just need food McDonaldâs is easy to find, somewhat cheap and very consistent
In France itâs horrendous, often cold, dry, service is long and to get a decent meal you have to spend 13 to 15⏠which would give you a nice burger with homemade fries in any bistro (perhaps even a glass of wine)
The french diet is fascinating, as a nation on the whole they eat much more salt, fat, carbs etc. But because they eat far less ultra processed crap and cook more from scratch they have less health issues associated with diet.
Over here in Belgium it's trash compared to Burger king & our local fast food thing called "Quick". Bad burgers, bad fries. Also not very cheap. It's just trash.
Belgian here too, my sum up for the best food items is:
Fries: Quick
Burgers: Burger King
Nuggets: McDonalds
Overall I still like McDonaldâs the best and itâs the most accessible fast food chain. Quick on the other hand is nasty. Wtf are they doing with their burgers. Burger King is good too but I just love my nuggets.
Few years ago McDonalds changed their model in the US a bit, they did bump up the prices but the quality also did get a bit better as well. The model shifted imo instead of trying to cater to poorer people, theyâre targeting the middle class
Yeah, they were copying the Australian model. McCafe and all the specialty burgers, like Angus burgers etc were all concepts developed by McDonalds in Australia
Is it working? Has the quality changed enough to draw people back?
Not really working, a big issue is that a lot of the âdealsâ theyâre offering are in the app only. And a majority donât use the app. Checking right now, I can get any size fries for $1, $2 for a breakfast sandwich, free medium fries if I spend $1, free 10pc nuggets or Big Mac if I spend $10.All of which are pretty solid deals if you consider the individual value of the items themselves. Maintaining an app per restaurant isnât at all convenient, convenience/low prices was effectively their entire old model.
Also think the demographic theyâre targeting now is a bit more health conscious, eating it as frequently as they need to be sustainable is a poor health choice, theyâve gotten a ton of negative publicity for being unhealthy. People in general are cooking more at home these days which is probably for the best.
I don't even understand why people are confused. I can get a double cheeseburger for $3. Or I can get a better one for $7 from Culver's or $15-20+tip from a restaurant. I know it varies by location, but the McDonald's by my house is very reliable and faster than literally every other option. Cheaper and quicker means I'm going to go there sometimes, even if it's obviously not as good. I also eat frozen pizza and microwave meals sometimes, even though there's better quality food that's more expensive available to me. Quick and cheap has its place.
In France (I don't know about elsewhere), eating at McDonald's has become way more expensive than eating at a real restaurant. McDonald's has turned ridiculously expensive for cold burgers and fries, plus missing items in your order.
In my opinion, McDonald's has become the ultimate scam.
I stopped eating there when my usual order jumped from âŹ12 to âŹ17.
There are so many easy and cheap meals to make that I only get McDonald's if I'm on a long trip with my children and it is the only convenient place to eat. Personally I like grabbing one of those Japanese golden curry packages and cooking up some rice and a bit of chicken or sausage.
I don't get why people still go to McDonald's. Here in France it's practically a religion, I've met many people believing that KFC, Burger King and Quick are bad, despite never going there.
Burger King is slowly catching up with this matter. But the others ? They don't have the money nor the customer base for that.
Quick, As of today, Is a Halal Fast food. Do you think you can find 1.000 people daily in a 5.000 inhabitants village where the next Supermarket is 10km or more ?
KFC, Relies heavily on the same crowd and the youth. Same matter, out of urban or semi urban areas, no customer in sufficent numbers.
Quick is bad. Some of its outlets don't even use good ingredients. KFC is surprisingly good though. But McDonald's, yeah, even I don't understand how it's so crowded every time. Burger King actually is better in quality.
There's a Burger King and a McDonald's near Gare St Lazare in Paris and BK is always less crowded for some reason. Maybe it's the placement.
in Europe McDonald's has few nice features - when you are hungry outside your home, you can get something that is safe to eat, somewhat tasty (at least for some people. It's obvious every restaurant is MUCH better, but it's also more expensive, takes more time to eat something there) and somewhat fast
So, if I am hungry outside the house - it's fairly easy choice to get something in literally 5 minutes you can take for takeout and eat in your car, and not get food poisoning. It applies to Europe, because murrica has literally no food quality standards
Tbf the American fast food restaurants around the world have different menus and different standards. Iâm not claiming that in other countries itâs gourmet food or anything but just that some of the menus around the world are pretty creative and there is food that tastes much better than the American counterparts. For instance, i would never go to Subway in the US but their menu in India has some bangers. I donât really go to Chipotle in the US because you have better local Mexican places but in France, Chipotle is probably one of the very few places that have any resemblance to Mexican and thereâs not many local Mexican restaurants. In China, Pizza Hut is a sit-down restaurant and some of them are pretty fancy
It's baffling that there are still so many McDonald "restaurants" in the Netherlands compared to Burger King. Despite the bad price/ quality/ quantity ratio.
Being here first and spent alot of money on commercials certainly helps.
But to me, only bad products spent a whole lot on commercials to fool people into thinking your product is actually good while it's not.
Yeah, I was looking at nuggets here the other day, and macca's is trying to sell 3 (plus sauce) for $6aud when kfc has go buckets (3 nuggs and chips) for $5, and hungry jack's (aussie burger king) just released a snack box (6 nuggs and chips and sauce) for $5.
(Though they all fall flat when you look at supermarkets where steggles and inghams, which supply many fast food places, sell frozen nuggets for about $11-13/kg.)
People wouldn't go back and buy more if they considered it bad tasting food.
It doesn't matter how much advertising a company does. If the food is considered shit by everyone, then the company wouldn't be viable to stay in business.
If it tastes bad, it would indeed be out of buisiness. But that isn't really the point because people who dine there obviously like the stuff. It's what chemicals they actually put in their meat and other products and where it's coming from.
McDonalds is anything but a nutricious meal to me. I never felt satisfied eating there while it tastes just ok.
Back then when I was a student, the sole reason to go there was because it was quick and cheap and that was 25 years ago. Nowadays I avoid such places and it's not even cheap anymore.
Having tried the Buger King burger, even my friendâs 6 year old kid has gone of McDâs and their happy meal - for a plain old Cheeseburger from Burger King.
Once the kids lose interest, the parents will follow.
I went to BK for the first time in a long time this weekend. Everything was freshly cooked and the burger was as big as it was when i was 15. 10/10 BK over McDonalds moving forward.
Is the weight of the patty taken before cooking? They say they did adjustments to basically every ingredient, but the weight of the patty stayed the same.
It's so telling when people feel so betrayed over McDonald's burger sizes despite them never changing, because it's one of the few chain foods they've eaten since they were children and haven't factored in they're the ones who've changed in size over time.
Here in the Netherlands they legit shrinked down the Big Tasty with Bacon from a 3:1 patty to a 4:1 patty, the same one the Quarter Pounder uses, but that was mostly an efficiency move as they don't have to reserve an entire grill for the Big Tasty anymore.
Them keeping the price the same despite it being smaller is something to feel betrayed over though, hahaha.
But yeah, things like Big Mag, Hamburger and even the french fry portions have remained consistent over the years.
It bothers me that the Big Mac posts getting posted damn near weekly complaining about them getting smaller when they've never changed. Yet, you never see that at the top of the threads.
Yea itâs âbigâ due to the extra bun, the patties were always tiny. If you want something actually big from McDâs you get the double quarter-pounder.
It absolutely baffles me that people are STILL going to McDonalds lol. Itâs been getting shittier for the last twenty years. Last one I had was about 7 years ago, and it was fucking dire back then. I canât imagine it got better lol.
I'm ashamed to say that McDonald's is one of my favorite meals. It also happens to be cheaper than any other restaurant I know of around here. Win win for me, but I'll boycott if it gets much worse
I feel like most people ate bad McDonald's, cold or badly prepared, and just assumed that's the baseline quality.
Now the amount the quality fluctuates is wild and pretty unacceptable. I got a fucking scare when I had a batch of nuggets so bad I thought they changed the recipe. But whenever I get well made and fresh food, it's killer. And it's killer for the cheapest price around compared to other fast food places. It's not that much cheaper, and the prices just get worse every day. But God the prices at other fast food chains are even bleaker.
my mom used to take me to mcdonaldâs as a treat after hard doctors appt - i still do this to this day⌠i love mcdonaldâs.. i could eat mcmuffins every morning it it wasnt for the price and caloriesâŚ
Same to be honest. I cut back on a lot of American products after the whole Greenland invasion thing, but honestly a substitute for McDonalds in Malta doesn't exist so I inevitably went back.
Yes, we have Burger King (Used to manage one myself), but it's 50% more in price for 10% more portion, and at that point I might as well pay an extra âŹ1 and get a real burger from sit-down restaurant.
You're right tho. I had it on and off in the 00s and it was always a treat - not saying it's good food, but it hit the right spot. Went a couple of times in the past year or two and it was just bad. Small, flavourless, expensive.
80âs was when we got one in my home city in UK. It was classed as a real treat back then. Great quality, good sized burgers. Early noughties was when it started going downhill a little. But it was a gradual decline at first. Now it just seems to get worse by the week from all the complaints I see about it.
Well that's the reason this happens. If you can cut costs and not lose sales, you'll cut costs. Do people think they can guilt-trip McDonalds into improving?
My theory is that burgers at other restaurants have become so enormous that we now expect all burgers to be bigger. Since the Big Mac hasn't changed, it now looks small.
I don't know why people are so outraged about this kind of thing. They're profiteering companies. If you don't like it, stop giving them money. This is the only language they understand.
If I go to McDonald's it's because I want something quick to pick up on the road and I only ever get the #7 meal where I live.
2 double cheeseburgers. No mess, super easy to eat while driving and the cost:food ratio doesn't feel like im being completely cheated. I go there once or twice a year at most.
the shitty thing is that in brazil McDonald's is quite expensive, and the food quality/quantity is so poor. I really dont understand why people buy it so much
Oh great, another post complaining how small your McDonalds, that you just paid for with your own money, and likely will again very soon, is.
One month of people boycotting McDonalds and watch those burgers magically get bigger.
But nah, people keep paying, and they keep getting smaller, because why the fuck not, if every time you make it smaller, your profits go up even further? We're about 5 years away from paying McDonalds so we can sit in their restaurant and smell their food.
Posts like this remind me of the Subway commercial where they said a Big Mac had 44 grams of fat in them. I wonder, with all the downsizing, how much fat is actually in a Big Mac? Might it be bordering on not so bad for you now?
Something changed over a decade ago that makes me violently reject McDonald's food. I haven't been there in over a decade but it looks more appalling now.
Fuck you McDonaldâs. We are not coming back. You can have shitty quality as long as itâs fast and cheap. You canât have shitty quality and charge what youâre charging.
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u/Successful-Ad-367 17h ago
Baffles me that anyone either bothers with McDonaldâs anymore