Discussion
How fast food got so eye-wateringly expensive
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/how-fast-food-got-so-eye-wateringly-expensive/
"The Keg burger back then [in 2016] wasn’t 56 per cent more expensive than the McDonalds burger. It was 260 per cent more expensive than the McDonalds burger."
The article implies that it's cheaper if you buy from McDonald's using their app. Anyone know if that's true?
@mpjgregoire Car-bound retail in North America is a racket with competition suppressed through large swaths of land being owned by one landlord and that landlord being willing to sell prime locations to large corporate chains with the added bonus of anti-competitive covenants.
The traditional dynamic of a city (think back 100 years when there were little if any land use bylaws) with property owners only owning small parcels making landlords compete with one-another is choked.
@virtuous_sloth I agree that it was a mistake to design our cities around cars, and I'm mostly opposed to zoning. Empirically though, is it true that property ownership in (let's say) downtown Toronto is more concentrated now than it was in 1926? Could be true, I'm not sure.
Our laws and governments should work harder to encourage competition.
@mpjgregoire That's the exception that proves the rule.
I'm sure a lot of Toronto (think the parts with gridded streets) is much less concentrated than the parts where suburban malls are. Have you noticed that, outside the insane lack of prioritization of streetcars over private automobiles, the former parts of Toronto are quite livable? Think of all the 2-or-3-over-1 rental/retail that lines so much of every major street. So many mom and pop shops compared with any suburban mall.
There's a third category of restaurant that they aren't discussing here: the mom and pop burger place.
10-20 years ago you paid a premium for your local burger (or gyro, kebab, donair, poutine, etc.)
Many of them are now cheaper than big chain fast food and you help the local economy more.
The only thing a chain really buys you is consistency.
@mpjgregoire In addition to the tech surveillance the article talks about, the price increase mechanism is achieved by corporate charging franchisees higher rent and wholesale product cost so that the franchisee does not see much if any of that price increase. They are abusing their monopoly, which includes restrictive covenants on retail shopping centres to prevent nearby competition.