Your experience is either extremely limited or highly atypical. More likely both. People may generally be about as sharp as bowling pins but I’ve seen enough folks with the mental fortitude to determine when the cashier has made an error of 3 cents (and the lung capacity to complain loudly about it) to know it wouldn’t take long for customers to figure out they really weren’t saving anything and go elsewhere.
What do you mean “if?” The OP has already said as much.
OK, yes, I did misunderstand your post.
I had questioned whether the OP remembered the prices correctly (see post #15). I am skeptical that the restaurant would so blatantly mislead customers like this and surmised that perhaps Lobsang had overlooked something.
I like Post Raisin Bran. My grocery store has been selling a 20 oz box for $2.50 and a 25 oz box for $3.50. hmmm 12.5 cents per oz for the smaller box and 14 cents per oz for the bigger box.
Volume packages should be more economical, but sometimes they are not.
I get irked at Mcikey D’s pricing on breakfast value meals. The drink is always a coffee and sodas are pricier. I don’t drink coffee and it pisses me off to pay 50 cents extra for a medium drink when I know their cost on both items are trivial.
(and no one has ever sued MickeyD for a hot soda spilling in their lap!!)
Are you speaking of “combo meals” generally (in which case I agree Mcdonalds is atypical and McDonalds is only a limited part of my experience with fast food)?
I remember the commercials when they first introduced the combo meals and the pitch then was that order-by-number saved time and improved order accuracy. You’d think with a name like “extra value meal” there would be, y’know, actual extra value… but on the occasions where I’ve bothered to compare the price of individual items vs. combos (usually only the first time I had liberty in a new port) it’s made no difference. Maybe there is something uniquely strange about the pricing at McD’s sites within an hour of naval activities around the world and that skews my observations.</hijack>
Check the receipt to see if it’s a franchise or corporate owned. If it’s a franchise, calling corporate won’t have much effect unless it’s a food quality/shelf life issue.
Nah this is a state-to-state thing and applies only to Ohio and any other state that chooses to do it this way. And it’s only carbonated drinks, BTW not orange or lemonade.
The OP isn’t even in America.
I’m confused here.
You’re in The Isle of Man, across the sea here in Lancashire a McDonalds regular value meal is £3.39. Are you paying more than that?
You are reading more into this than is there. Grocery stores have too limited a range of markups, and managers are too busy to try to fiddle with individual prices on specific sizes of items. The prices are largely set based on a markup percentage on the price from the supplier. And the supplier sets prices based on their cost, and on their inventory levels.
So if you see the smaller box selling for a cheaper unit price than the larger box, it’s generally because the supplier (or manufacturer) suddenly has an oversupply of the smaller box, and so cuts the price to move it out of the warehouse. (Most groceries are perishable, and need to be sold quickly.) That’s also why you may see several different grocery stores in town having some of the same items advertised on sale this week. There are only a handful of grocery wholesalers who supply all the grocery stores in the country. In smaller towns, it’s not uncommon for all the stores in town to be supplied by the same wholesaler (maybe even delivered on the same truck).
I’ve worked at 2 of the 3 largest wholesale grocers in the USA, and this basic supply-and-demand fact explained most of the price fluctuations & weekly sales of groceries. Not any nefarious attempt by store managers to fool their customers – just basic market pricing.
I’ve overheard the fruit produce buyer in the cafeteria at the wholesale grocery company talking about how the apricot harvest is coming in really good this year, and that he’s just ordered a whole lot of apricots at a real good price. Then a week or two later, all the grocery stores in town are advertising a sale on fresh apricots. (And, somehow, the food columns in the newspaper are featuring recipes for apricot-date cookies or apricot fruit salads.) And the fundraising event at a local hotel features apricot tarts as a dessert. I had never noticed those connections before.
So your advice to not assume any specific size package, or brand name, or even placement on the end of the aisles is going to be cheaper is absolutely correct – always check out the unit price to find the best deal. Because it will vary a lot, depending on lots of different factors.
Several years back I worked at a giant chain restaurant that sold donuts in the U.S. I’ll give you three guesses.
Anyway, I quickly added up their “value combos” and found that the price was exactly the same. I can’t remember if the wording in the sign was “value combos” but I do remember that the wording our managers told us to say was “value combos”. Occasionally someone would come through the drive thru from corporate and if you use the tag “Welcome to blankity blank Would you like to buy a value combo?” you’d get a 20 buck tip from them. We were understaffed and I wasn’t about to waste that much time over and over for eight hours so I said “What can we get for you?” not as corporately nice or whatever, but we were busy and no boss of mine really made a big stink about it. If it was a value I might’ve made an effort, but if it wasn’t? Not wasting my time. I not once heard of a corporate person going through in the four months I was there, and they’d announce their review to you at the end of their visit whether you said their taglines or not. Over that time I saved more than twenty bucks in pay, I’m sure, by just keeping things moving when we were far behind on orders.
I went to McDonalds yesterday and just looked at the receipt and my big and tasty combo and happy meal were each thoroughly itemized, but they added up to the quoted price. I think they itemize everything because of all the options. Like on a Happy Meal, you can get fries or apple slices, but either one gets itemized at 90 cents.
Something’s mcfishy at that Isle of Man McDonalds.
OT, but if you want to cause mayhem at a McDonalds, here is the recipe: order a Big and Tasty combo with a regular drink. The cost will be $5.65. Give the cashier $6.15. It’s pandemonium every time.