Every few weeks since late fall, receipts for an $18 Big Mac meal from a Connecticut rest stop go viral online — with social media users lining up with their own staggering drive-thru receipts and searing comments, many of which communicate something along the lines of the title of a similarly-viral TikTok video, “McDonald’s has gotten too cocky.”
Inflation has been a hot-button issue since the early days of the pandemic, stoked both by supply chain disasters and international conflict, but now consumers are desperate for relief. In decades past, fast food has been a reliable source of hot and cheap meals, but even the price of value meal basics are on the rise. In some locations, a single McDonald’s hash brown costs over $3, while comedian Kevin Fredericks recently released a video bemoaning the seeming lack of a dollar menu. “We used to be a proper country,” he lamented. “$4.29 for a McChicken? $3.19 for just a cheeseburger not even a McDouble cheeseburger, just a cheeseburger? This ain’t no McValue! These are just McPrices, these are just regular McPrices.”
