McDonald's plans to start selling bigger burgers

I’m not sure what happened to fast food restaurants. Yeah, sure, they were unhealthy for us but they used to taste good. Now, the portions are smaller, they cost a lot more, they have the texture of wet cardboard with sauce, and it doesn’t taste good. I guess if all you have ever known is the fast food restaurants of the last 20 years then you probably never experienced a real Big Mac or Whopper from the 70s and even to the 80s. Somewhere around the 90s shit just started falling apart. Greed right, it’s always greed.
- last 20 years
  70s
  Oh boy, guy is over here outing himself in broad daylight...
  
  lol
  
  LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU
  
  I had a similar moment yesterday when I realized Anchorman came out 19 years ago.
- I'm not a huge McDonalds fan, but I used to get lunch there occasionally because it was fast, convenient, and inexpensive. Now it's none of those things. I think the self-serve kiosks somehow made things worse.
  
  Gotta love touching something god knows how many other people touched before you right before you get some food.
  
  Yeah, McDs was a no-brainer back in the day.
  The cost is absurd for value now. I'd rather go elsewhere.
- A quarter pounder meal is around ten bucks, so is a cheeseburger and fries from a local restaurant or diner. The attractiveness was cheapness and now it's not even that
  
  Hard to find a restaurant burger near me for less than 20 bucks(usually with fries...usually)
- Same thing that's happening in every industry. When the objective of the company is profit, not the product, the product suffers.
- I miss Welfare Wednesday. $.59 hamburgers and $.69 cheeseburgers.
  
  29c and 39c here back in the early 90s, but couldn't even compete at that with their next-door competitor (hardee's) doing 25c and 35c
- You were a child back then, which skews your memory.
  
  I dunno, I feel like McDonald's fries being fried in beef fat made them the big hit back in the day.
  
  No, the food really did taste better, due to the cooking process and the different ingredients that were involved.
  For example, the fries were cooked in beef tallow; the meat they used was of better quality, and more nutritious. The bread was different as well—McDonald’s changed it again only a few years ago.
  Edit—Well, they’re changing their burgers again: wsj.com/business/hospitality/mcdonalds-burger-new-menu-2400d22b
  
  Nah, I know for a fact that the Whopper has been enshittified since at least the 90s. It used to be one of my favorites but now tastes like shit and costs 3x the price.
  
  No, McD's has publicly changed various formulations over the years. Never for the better. Even just a couple years ago when they went to "never frozen" beef for some of their sandwiches - they tasted worse IMO, but I'm sure somehow it saved McD's money.
  We've got a pub near us that costs about only 10 bucks more in total to carryout from there and feed my family on burgers and fries than if we go to McDs. But we get a large hand shaped patty cooked to our individual preferences, on a bun from a local bakery, generous portion of thick cut fries, and a better experience all around.
  It's insane that McD's prices are within spitting distance of the place. The drive-thru (and its related convenience) is the one and only benefit to McDs. I have reluctantly loved McD's for most of my life, but there's no doubt it's gone downhill a few times, and for sure in the past few years. If they hadn't also jacked up their prices it wouldn't be so bad, but it's really hard to justify eating there now.
  They've become as infested with corporate greed as every other company of any significant size.
  
  https://i.imgur.com/bRXrFk2_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=grand
- Capitalism. They need to increase profits year over year. They continuously sell less for more.
  
  Yes, people like to forget where this particular brand of greed comes from.
- I miss McDonald fries from the 80’s. Y’all just don’t know. They should bring it back for a limited time like the McRib, or offer both fries and label it as Classic fries.
- Basically. When companies are allowed to pick two from
  faster
  cheaper
  or
  better
  They usually pick faster or cheaper unless competition forces them to improve quality in order to survive.
  
  Did capitalism not exist in the 60s?
- I think one factor is probably “advances” in food science. Look how many ingredients go into an average fast food bun, for example.. we have so many hyper-processed foods made with not just hella preservatives, but instead of wheat flour and butter it’s like wheat and corn starch, gluten, various vegetable proteins and several different oils, etc all recombined in a rather industrial way. It’s cheaper, and it’s sometimes specifically engineered to appeal to our palates, but it’s been taken too far imo. This is not just an issue in fast food by any means.
- I dunno. The thing about the Big Mac is the convenience. It doesn't really compare to actual burgers, but it's got a distinctive taste, a handy size and no waiting time. On the other side of the burger spectrum are the restaurant café burgers that are difficult to eat even with utensils and still taste like something you could do better yourself. The best burgers are from some shady unknown local grill, but those are hit or miss. Anyway my point is that the Bic Mac is a fair product, but it's not really comparable to actual food. I'm not disappointed with it because I didn't expect it to be different from whatever it is and sometimes that is good enough. Like, I wouldn't want to eat a gourmet restaurant every day even if I could afford it and had the time to wait for the bill.
  Tl;dr: fast food sucks because it's not food, but fast food rules because it's fast.

So they'll reintroduce the old size with a larger price tag now that they shrank the others while keeping them priced the same. More of a reason to stay away
- McDonald's prices are actually lower today than they were in the 1980s when adjusted for inflation.
  
  However, incomes are lower than that, so we're still paying more.
  
  I was totally ready to call your BS, but you're right.
  Cost of big Mac combo in 1980: 2.59, 10.24 after adjusted for 2023
  Cost of big Mac combo in the app today: 9.20 (For my area anyway)

The ⅓-pounder? A&W already tried that, and it flopped, because people don't understand fractions.
- *Americans.
  The rest of the world doesn't bother with fractions of "pounds" in the first place.
  
  Fractions work with metric too you know.
  
  Chippys list burgers in half pounder or quarter pounder.
  
  The 150 grammer
  
  Due to branding, they're still called 1/4 pounder elsewhere.
- The 33 and 1/3 e10-3 pounder.
- More likely a half-pounder. They already sell a double quarter pounder. And all Americans know that halfbacks are larger than quarterbacks, from watching Real Football every week.
- It seems pretty successful for Hardee's/Carl's Jr
- both BK and McD used to sell a 1/3-lb burger for a while in the early-mid 00s. Wendy's, too, IIRC. to my recollection, it did ok in sales, but was maligned for being "unhealthy", and both chains stopped selling it shortly thereafter.
  
  Meanwhile, modern Wendy's is all, "Here's three patties on a greasy bun slathered in ketchup/mustard/mayo, and if you manage to take a bite it's all gonna come sliding out the other side like bloody pus. Comes with bacon as an option, too. Don't forget your quart of sugar water."
- I've heard this a million times. And it honestly sounds like the kind of thing an executive would blame to excuse bad sales.
  
  https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/

The bun will be twice as thick or something.
- It'll all be lettuce and onions
  
  A fat stack of pickles.

The first six paragraphs (plus the headline) of this "news article" are the same thing with slightly different wording...
- I’ve noticed that on many articles now. By the time I get to the actual article I’ve read the headline and the opening paragraph at least three times. I don’t know why but it bothers me.
  
  SEO as "news"
  
  They probably aren't even written by a human at this point.
  
  I think the idea is to pad out the content on the page so you have more ‘reasonable’ landscape to display ads. Like if you have ad breaks between every paragraph, more paragraphs = more ads.
  
  AI weitten probably.
- I'm not sure if that is just old fashioned lazy writing, or the even more lazy option of having AI generate the entire thing and not even bothering with proofreading it before publishing

Well, they only shrank due to shrinkflation. In addition, they cost more than the bigger ones they used to make. So, really, they're just planning on gouging us even more
- this was my thought. they can't shrink it down anymore without it getting ridic so now make "premium" options that they can shrinkflate on later.

I think it should read “McDonald's plans to go back to selling bigger burgers”.

"...having a larger burger is an opportunity,"
...customers want "larger, high-quality burgers that fill you up."customers want "larger, high-quality burgers that fill you up."
Bigger burgers. High-quality burgers. Not more meat. More meat is easy, just add more meat. This is going to be some kind of filler, or a mix of "beef" and ground beans.
- Worst of both worlds. Just give me a damn black bean burger
- Is that necessarily a bad thing? Sure their motives aren't great but if it tastes fine who cares. Probably healthier for you and definitely better for cows & the environment.
- Bigger burgers. Larger burgers. Meat goes on it. Much meat. Pile it up. High meat burger that fills the customer up.

Wonder what they price will be.
- Less, definitely less...

This is what our founding fathers fought for.
- they fought for slavery and not to have to pay their taxes. i get that you're joking, but it's crazy to me that people still use this argument to defend... anything. Our founding fathers had some decent ideas about democracy and the separation of church and state, but when it came to their vaunted "all men are created equal" concept, they clearly didn't mean what they said. What they really meant was, "Down with the aristocracy, down with nobility! We want all rich, white, Christian men on the same top echelon of society, regardless of bloodline!" Also, "Can i purchase that human?"
  
  all men¹ are created equal
  1 - Property-owning white men, no women, no poors
  
  It really needs to be stressed that the founding fathers were not in any way a single group with cohesive ideas. There's a reason that 90% of early American history is these guys arguing about essentially everything.
  Some were genuine true believers in Enlightenment philosophy. Some agreed with it in principle but were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of pragmatism. Some didn't give a shit but saw which way the wind was blowing and realized it would be more profitable to go along. And some were simply virulent pieces of shit.

oh boy can't wait for another 10$ burger with my 5$ fries

The refresh includes having thicker bun bases to preserve heat, pieces of onion poured directly onto some of the patties as they cook, and adding more sauce to Big Macs,
Oh sure, just what they needed... More bread and sauce. Fucking gross
- Big Mac's do need more sauce.
  
  Big Mac sucks. They're mostly buns and they use tiny patties from cheeseburger. It's basically double cheeseburger but with 3 thick ass buns with sauce. Why the fuck do people like those?
  McDouble is where it's at.

Let me guess, they’re patriotic Americans so intentionally coming out with a 1/3 pound burger to disprove that apocryphal internet story once and for all. When it takes off, it proves Americans really can do basic math

I need quality over quantity. It's one of the reasons I rarely go to Olive garden nowadays. If I want fast food Italian, I'll go pickup on olive garden.
If I want a nice dining experience. I go to a local Italian restaurant I know of. (same price, half the food, 10x better quality)
Most of the time I find myself having to season anything I pick up from olive garden.
- That's great but a lot of people are doing calorie per dollar calculations.
- Implying they would be giving up their famous “quality” now? You need a certain quantity for quality. The burgers now are so small, with such paper thin meat, that the proportions and texture are all wrong. The value proposition is terrible either on quality or quantity.

I believe they currently use CPU tech to make molecular thin beef patties

And it'll be $9 a burger, you watch.
- Yup and the staff won't get a penny of that increase. Hell, the materials purchased probably won't cost them more either so it'll just be profit.
  Kill yourselves eating the garbage and pay more for it. Ba dap bap bap baaahhh...
  
  there are places where it's the only option. like highway rest stops.

the value and the experience of fast food is just not there anymore. some startup is going to disrupt all of this with something so deliciously reasonable soon i hope.
- Food is a much harder industry for new tech to disrupt, because no new startup can ever compete with the beef supply chains that McDonalds etc. have established.
  It's easy to launch a website to a some online thing. It's much harder to an absurd amount of agricultural products all over the country for cheap.
  
  i agree, and am convinced it wont be beef. or fried potatoes.
- If it was that easy, we'd be flooded with reasonably priced sources of food and other things.
  The ability for the "free market" to fix all our problems has always been vastly overstated.
  
  The ability for the "free market" to fix stuff is antiproportional to the stupidity of customers being manipulated by obvious advertising lies.
  The solution is education and teaching critical thinking skills.
  
  it was never easy. if it were i would have done it myself.

I was going to make a crack about them inventing a time machine to get Big Macs from like 20 years ago, but I actually kind of wish they'd bring back the angus 1/3rd pounder, those burgers were great.
- You wouldn't want the bigger 1/4 pounder?
  
  Rather I want an 1/8 pounder

Guess some executives finally saw WALL-e and saw a goal they should shoot for lol
- I don't think they needed to see WALL-E to decide that if they can sell even more meat for Americans to stuff into their fat faces, they will do so.

So are they returning to the original sizes of burgers before shrinkflation?
- Well, since the original patties have always been 0.1lb precooked weight and the quarter pounder has always been (checks notes) 0.25lb precooked weight, I'd say shrinkflation is one thing that hasn't come to McDs. Actual inflation? Oh, yes - $4 for a double cheese burger (with 0.2lb of beef) is straight up insane. That's $10 for a half pound burger - nearly the same cost per ounce of burger as a Five Guys standard burger, which isn't even in the same league.
  
  more fat in them nowadays than there used to be, and the buns have less 'substance', too.. oh, and the cheese is wafer thin now. so yea. 'shrinkflation' has definitely hit even mcdonalds

Hey you guys seem to love greasy garbage. How about bigger sized greasy garbage, Huh?

Still waiting for them to bring back their good chicken. Nuggets are thinner and more dried out since Covid, and snack wraps still AWOL.

I just want some veggie options in my country. I'd settle for a single burger on the menu!
- The French fries aren’t even vegetarian in the US… they contain beef extract.

Remember: McDonalds gave free food to the IDF. You might not want to buy one of their bigger burgers.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-donating-thousands-meals-idf-israeli-citizens-hamas-attacks-2023
- Would you rather they gave free food to the terrorists?
  
  I'm not sure which terrorists you mean in this instance, but how about McDonalds not give free food to anyone involved?

A mcdouble isn't that big, but somehow I feel like I am going to explode after eating just 1 of them motherfuckers. I can't imagine them being more filling. Other burger joints don't get me feeling like I over ate with just 1 burger and a small fry the way McDonald's does.

The fact that the big mac - their 'iconic' burger - patty only covers 2/3 of the bun it's paired with.... the fuck took so long to realize their shit is small af?

Mondoburger?

Bet it will be the size of a whataburger.

Here in EU their biggest in diameter is the Big Tasty. Do you also get that in the US?
- I have never heard of the Big Tasty, but I looked into it and apparently it's also called the Big 'N Tasty in some markets, and is in the lineage of some older burgers such as the McDLT and the Arch Deluxe. They tried it in the US from 2000-2011, but discontinued it. Not sure if there's a current equivalent.

I’d laugh if all they did was make the bun bigger to make a “bigger” burger