The day after McDonald's officially raised the price, I went to the store in Jiuxianqiao, Beijing. As usual, it was crowded with people, and the adults who were alone sat in their seats, swiping their mobile phones and gnawing on their favorites, as if their choice Xi was not affected by the price increase turmoil.
From December 27, McDonald's China has raised prices across the board, covering 90% of hamburger snack products, and McDonald's membership packages have increased by 1 yuan at the same time. Netizens who are interested in comparison also found that compared with the previous day, the Big Mac Package, McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger Package, Plate Roast Chicken Leg Burger Package, and Double-layer Deep Sea Cod Burger Package have all increased in price by 0.5 yuan to 2 yuan, and French fries and crispy fries have also increased by 0.5 yuan and 1 yuan compared with before. The only thing that remains unchanged is the free match, after two price increases in 2021 and early 2023, the price of the free match is temporarily maintained at 13.9 yuan. From a double custard burger with taro pie to a McFragrant chicken with mini chocolate Shinchi, you can choose from a 6x9 combination in the red and white zone given by McDonald's, with a maximum discount of 4.2%. Because of the cheap price, the free match was also ridiculed by netizens as a "poor ghost package", which can "bless every child who works hard outside".
Stills from "Chongqing Forest".
Unlike the flow of people in the store, social media showed one-sided dissatisfaction with McDonald's price increase. The content that netizens complained about ranged from the size of the burger, to the price of a single product, to the expensive takeaway costs...... And the reason why I appeared at McDonald's at this noon was also to save 9 yuan in shipping fees. After 11 minutes of cycling through the streets of Beijing at minus 4 degrees, I chose the can't go wrong with the Big Mac set menu with taro pie.
The self-service ordering machine showed a total cost of 48 yuan, and for a moment I couldn't believe my eyes - after all, there is an avocado tree next door that is known as the "standard configuration of the middle class", and a set meal is only this price. The impact on McDonald's price increases, as if it had been pricked by a needle, suddenly became clear.
"The Followers of Maimen"
There are many people who like McDonald's, and they call themselves "McMen believers".
This is a spiritual belief that understands everything, and it has a very high gold content. After all, there are many international chains that have grown up with our generation, but only a handful can be given the title of "a certain door". Such as Saizeriya and Subway, they often represent decades of stable companionship, and hold on to their core in the torrent of great changes.
McDonald's is one of the top streams.
Stills from "The Great Entrepreneur".
This generation has almost no memories of not growing up in McDonald's: calling friends and companions to go to foreign fast food restaurants to copy homework, ordering a large potato for four or five people, and sitting for an afternoon; taking the exam to McDonald's for two hundred, and parents take them to McDonald's, not only eating McNugget, but also having another cone; a certain classmate celebrating his birthday at McDonald's, envy and jealousy, went home crying and playing with his temper...... McDonald's gives us not only the best memories of childhood, but also the sustenance and yearning for what is "happiness". James Watson, a professor at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, found in Hong Kong that "before McDonald's, East Asians didn't pay much attention to birthdays. However, the fast food industry, represented by McDonald's, has promoted Western-style birthday parties such as candles and cakes to the East Asian public through advertising, making it popular among young people. ”
Of course, the company at that time also had KFC, chicken mashed potatoes and creamy corn on the cob, which made us drool in our dreams countless times. It's a pity that KFC chose another direction later. It removed the tender beef Wufang and the pastoral crispy chicken burger, and replaced them with Northeast chicken racks, hot and sour noodles, snail noodles, and hot dry noodles to bombard the eye-catching intersections of every city in turn...... We can't evaluate the good or bad, we can only say that a certain sustenance in our hearts that could have been placed and relied on was ruthlessly taken away.
A still from "The Pink Panther".
Fortunately, there is McDonald's, which has a consistent taste, so that we can always recall the happiness that only belonged to the childhood. McNuggets, originally just a McDonald's worker's careful thinking, to give the person who ordered McNuggets an extra McNugget, but now it has become McDonald's "hidden menu": if you indicate in the order notes that you are a McMen believer, expecting to get the favor of McNuggets, you can really get an extra piece of McNuggets. If it's Children's Day, walk into McDonald's and say the code "I'm still a baby", and you may get a free mini cone. There are moments when adults want to be children again, and McDonald's can make those moments come true.
Young people are not stupid, they take these things to heart, and they spontaneously and voluntarily play brand memes – whether it's forming groups on social media to support the brand, or coming to these places to eat after work. In fact, the wishes of the "disciples" are very simple, they hope that the brand will not change their strategy, they hope that the price will always be close to the people, and they hope that they can continue to wait for each other in the past or in the future. In the words of my friend UU, "McDonald's is one of the few comfort zones and anchors in life that remains the same, and being able to spend 13 yuan at McDonald's late at night to eat the same double-layer custard burger and taro pie when you were an hour will feel that the world is worth it."
Stills from "Foreign Daughter-in-law Local Lang".
It's trust, a quality that is increasingly rare in a world of turmoil, but it's also the world's most fragile double-edged sword. Like a serious oath, trust cannot be broken by any party. When it costs 50 yuan to eat a McDonald's, this trust becomes crumbling in a subtle enchantment.
McDonald's price metaphysics
Open a McDonald's coupon around 2014, and you will find that the price difference between its price and today's price is not as much as you imagined: a Big Mac plus Coke set price is 17 yuan, and the original price is 21 yuan.
But at that time, the Shaxian three-piece suit, as long as it was less than 10 yuan, the spicy tang could be eaten in single digits. On the other hand, today's Shaxian County in Beijing has long been free of single products below 10 yuan, and it also takes 30 yuan per capita to eat Yang Guofu.
This also led me to be confused: either they were once inflated, or they had a rare stabilisation of inflation. So I did some research and found out that the answer was actually somewhere in between.
Stills from "Coward".
Co-authored by five anthropologists, Golden Arch to the East is about McDonald's influence on the development of different cities in East Asia. After research, experts found that whether it was Hong Kong, Beijing, Japan and South Korea, McDonald's first entered these countries and regions, and invariably positioned itself as a "middle-class diet". The previous generation living in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will also remember that at that time, a hamburger cost 10 yuan, but the average salary at that time was only a few hundred yuan.
As McDonald's opens more and more stores in a region, the supply chain becomes more and more perfect, and the price begins to "decrease", but this reduction is not the familiar "price decline", but continues to maintain stability when the economy continues to develop, income continues to increase, and inflation gradually expands.
In 1994, a McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger was 10 yuan, in 2004, the price of a McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger was still 10 yuan, in 2014, its price came to 13 yuan, and now although the selling price is 24.5 yuan, if you buy a coupon in the live broadcast room, the average price can still be as low as 13.9 yuan each - the price is not only almost the same as 20 years ago, but also almost the same as 30 years ago. But if you're like me, you occasionally walk into McDonald's and have an irresistible curiosity about new products, the price will be like that of an assassin: a Bacon Double Angus Thick Cowburger is 49 yuan a la carte, and a Big Mac set meal is 39 yuan.
Stills from "Sweet Honey".
With this cognition, looking back at McDonald's price increase of 0.5~2 yuan per single product, you will find that you can't understand: if it is really expensive, then why can the live broadcast room be cheap? If it can really be cheap, why is it "sky-high"? This is the confidence of the old multinational listed company: its volume is large enough to control prices, and it is also large enough to treat customers with different loyalty.
There are only smart sellers, no pie in the sky. After 60 years on the market, McDonald's will not know where to make concessions and where to insist. The most obvious example of this is the delivery fee that no one can understand. While Meituan and Ele.me are making the threshold for takeaway cheaper in the form of inverted stickers, KFC McDonald's rarely goes the opposite way and insists on a 9 yuan delivery fee.
Stills from "Women's Delicious Burger Department".
A reporter has calculated that the salary of a takeaway delivery worker is 6~8 yuan per order, of which 60% is paid by Meituan, and the rest is borne by the store. In 2021, Meituan's financial report shows that its expenditure on takeaway delivery is 68.2 billion yuan, but its revenue from delivery is only 54.2 billion yuan, which means that Meituan loses 1 yuan for every order delivered. At the same time, an advertisement for SF Express to recruit McDonald's delivery workers in the same city reads, "Recruit McDonald's riders, 6.8 yuan per order." It shows that McDonald's not only does not want to participate in Meituan's loss-making thinking of inverted delivery fees, but also hopes to make a profit on takeaway.
Indeed, as of the third quarter of this year, McDonald's achieved revenue of $6.692 billion, of which same-store sales in the international development franchise market segment, which includes China and Japan, increased by 10.5%.
Stills from "Big Me".
Although we can bet on its former feelings, it is still an international company that has been listed for more than half a century, and profit is its primary goal, and the uncompromising 9 yuan shipping fee and the steady price increase for the retail side are its insistence on making a profit.
Contemporary young people, how to eat three meals a day
In the past 20 years, the price of KFC McDonald's has risen and fallen, almost all of which have been peaceful, and I have never experienced such an uproar of public opinion. Occasionally, there is speculation from diners, "Why can't I eat enough after I finish my 50, why can I eat again after I go down to a Big Mac?" Is it because the burger has become smaller?"
This price increase turmoil is not so much a matter of dissatisfaction with prices as a revolt against an increasingly complex living environment.
My parents' generation may never understand why just having a meal has become a big problem in our generation and in our time. Because the life of their generation is very simple, go to work on time, get off work on time, pass by the vegetable market in the evening to buy some fast dishes and stir-fry them on the table, and bring the extra into lunch the next day. There was no overtime, no PUA, no excessive mental fatigue, no fuzzy pricing in the capital market, no preservative additives for pre-made dishes.
Stills from "Please Answer 1988".
Their world is very simple, and our world is too noisy.
McDonald's is one of the few existences in our world that has stable expectations. When we are physically and mentally exhausted and unable to think anymore, we only hope that we can walk into a familiar environment, buy a meal that we have loved since childhood at a familiar price, and use such a sense of security to tell ourselves that there is still hope in life.
Stills from "Extreme Occupation".
If we can't even afford to eat McDonald's, how can we tell ourselves, tell ourselves that when we were young, we felt that "eating McDonald's every day is happiness", and that you will be doing well when you grow up? If you can't afford to eat McDonald's even if you work hard, what is the meaning of hard work?