Recently, some consumers discovered that the prices of most McDonald's meals have increased by 0.5-1 yuan. McDonald's price increases each time may not seem to be much, but they have been planned and increased little by little. Consumers dissatisfiedly pointed out that "it feels like boiling a frog in warm water."
It’s not just Chinese consumers who have been “cooked”. Australian "poor people" in the southern hemisphere discovered that compared with 2019, the price of a Big Mac in the store has increased by 1.6 Australian dollars (about 8 yuan), and the takeaway price has increased by 2.35 Australian dollars (about 11 yuan). "Fortune" magazine took stock of the price increases of McDonald's in the United States in recent years. Between 2019 and 2024, the average price of McDonald's menu products increased by 40%. Some foreign media even directly named McDonald's, saying "the increase was higher than the average inflation rate."
Taking the US market as an example, the annual inflation rate of US dollars from 2015 to 2025 is 3.17%. A product that sold for US$1 in 2015 should sell for US$1.37 in 2025. In the United States, McDonald's McChicken sold for US$1 in 2018, and rose to US$3.1 in 2025, an increase of 210%; Shuangji, known as the most perfect burger, has increased by 285% in 11 years. Even with the reduced increase in price, the Big Mac meal only increased by 27% from 2019 to 2024, still outperforming the average inflation rate.
Being more expensive is not the only thing McDonald's has been criticized for. Americans also took McDonald's to court as early as 2022 because the advertised burgers were 15%-20% larger than the actual ones. This lawsuit later evolved into a class action lawsuit. Data shows that American families with an annual household income of less than $45,000 continue to decline in McDonald's visits because they "no longer believe McDonald's is a good value for money."
However, in the past few years, McDonald's has successfully tied up with migrant workers in China, making it one of the few options where you can eat whatever you want. An angry migrant worker in a first-tier city planned to have a cold war with McDonald's for three months. When he entered the mall, he discovered that even if McDonald's increased the price by 50 cents, it was still a cost-effective lunch. "So why are those 30-yuan lunches with only two slices of meat so expensive?"