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Whether it’s for speed, convenience, or price, it’s no secret that Americans love fast food. Convenience aside, fast food has also been considered one of the most budget-friendly options to feed your family outside of cooking at home.
However, fast foodies claim menu prices have skyrocketed in recent years, prompting backlash online and on social media.
Have fast food prices really changed so dramatically? And if so, by how much? To find out, our team at FinanceBuzz collected pricing data for a dozen different chain restaurants over the last decade. We then calculated how much prices have risen in that timeframe and compared it to the overall inflation rate in the same period.
It’s interesting to see how the fast food chains’ price increases have all dramatically outpaced inflation, demonstrating clearly that while nobody likes inflation, the real problem is corporate greed!
Worth recalling is that the published inflation % increase does not include food and fuel which we all know have been on a runaway jump since January 2021.
The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 /hr. Various states and cities have passed wholesale increases in local minimum wages without any offset to employers. CA’s rate is $16, except for Fast Food workers, which jumped to $20 on April 1, 2024.
MD’s minimum is now $15/hr up from $13.25 last year, an increase of 13% by the stroke of a pen without an increase in worker productivity to pay for the jump.
Hidden in these increases are increased costs to employers for FICA, Social Security, unemployment and like levies which are tied to the wage paid; IOW, the employers’ payroll related costs went up more than 13%. And everything they buy to resell has likewise been dramatically increasing. At the end of the day, John Q Public pays for the rate increase ‘giveaway’
We are in Carter era inflation territory when employers and businesses tried to leap frog expected increases in costs by aggressively raising prices to not be caught short. Interesting times lie ahead and Bidenomics is the problem rather than a solution.
its probably more that hikes in minimum wage than inflation affecting this
fast food used to be a job teens did high school/college, not a career to support a family
Teens don’t want to work now 2:47. Inflation effects wages too
No they are not, and here is what is funny. You can go to BK or MCD’s and get 4 hamburgers for the cost of a medium french fry. A medium Fry is just about 4 dollars by itself.
You’re correct. If you ‘ bargain ‘ shop at BK or MCD or Wendys, you can feed a family of 4 for about 20 bucks. It may not be the healthiest food around but you can still get a tummy full.