Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
I wouldn’t say they’re cheaper, just now less expensive than the alternative. Gotta stick with the beans, lentils, rice, and some veggies since most other stuff is expensive. Fruit seems like a luxury with their prices most of the time.
I really see a lot of grocery prices, and the complaints about them, and then I look at how grocery stores mostly stock some permutation of corn and 5+ aisles of snack shit that’s worse for you than even fast food, while being comparably expensive. The truth is that buying core ingredients and actually cooking, preparing a meal, from scratch, saves you a shit ton of money over the bullshit most people buy. The issue is really that of time budget, in hustle culture we get so busy living life and being tied to the toil of work that the time left to reasonably cook for yourself falls off.
The idea of stepping back, forcing boundaries, and learning this skill, while painful, is still a good thing. Eating less shit, and more good ingredients, leads to better health overall. I hate the price gouging but love what this may lead to. Just fucking cook something healthy with real ingredients, and you may find it’s not just lentils, beans, potatoes, and cheap shit. People might check out some recipes and rediscover the produce area with cheap as fuck awesome ingredients and make stuff that restaurants typically don’t match on quality because the fucking same Sysco Foods truck just drops of microwaveable shit at each restaurant in town and they all just serve you fucked up gross shit you could’ve done far better than on your own.