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McDonald\u2019s<\/a> spent decades training customers<\/a> that if you had a dollar, you could get a burger. Now it\u2019s trying to redefine what \u201cvalue\u201d means, and it turns out customers have a very different idea<\/a>. More important, those customers aren\u2019t about to pay $2.50 for something they think should cost a lot less without complaining about it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s less a story about burgers and more a story about trust. Specifically, it\u2019s a story about the promise McDonald\u2019s has made its customers for decades. It\u2019s also about the trust problem the company created entirely on its own when its customers decided it was no longer keeping that promise.<\/p>\n The actual story here is that McDonald\u2019s rolled out its new McValue menu, featuring items that are all \u201cunder $3 each.\u201d It\u2019s built around what the company calls \u201cpredictable everyday low prices.\u201d There are no more complicated app-only promotions, no more buy-one-get-one deals, no more dollar menu nostalgia. Instead, you get prices that are, depending on how you do the math, roughly two and a half times what customers remember paying not that long ago.<\/p>\n The backlash has been immediate and, honestly, a little brutal. There are Reddit threads full of people reminiscing about 99\u00a2 McDoubles<\/a>. Customers are publicly mourning the death of the \u201cbuy one, get one for $1\u201d deals that used to anchor their lunch routine. The general sense is that McDonald\u2019s has lost touch with what its customers actually perceive as a value.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing: None of this is actually about the $2.50 cost of a McDouble.<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s built its entire competitive position on one very specific idea\u2014that value and convenience are more important than anything else. If you were hungry, McDonald\u2019s was fast, and the price was low enough that evaluating your options felt like a waste of time.<\/p>\n Which is why a $2.50 McDouble isn\u2019t being evaluated against inflation-adjusted commodity prices or franchisee labor costs. It\u2019s being evaluated against what McDonald\u2019s itself promised for 30 years. The company ran dollar menus and two-for-one campaigns long enough to wire a specific expectation into an entire generation of customers. Unwiring that expectation requires a lot more than a press release about a \u201cvalue platform.\u201d<\/p>\n The timing makes it worse. Airline fees, streaming price hikes, hotel \u201cresort fees\u201d at places with no resort\u2014Americans have spent the past few years watching every affordable convenience slowly get more expensive and less generous. Fast food was one of the last categories that still felt like a safe, cheap, low-stakes decision. That feeling is gone now, and McDonald\u2019s is the most visible symbol of its disappearance.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a threshold problem the company may be underestimating. Once fast-food prices climb close enough to fast-casual prices, customers start asking the one question McDonald\u2019s has never wanted them to ask: Is this actually good? For most of the restaurant\u2019s history, that question never came up because the price made it irrelevant. When you\u2019re spending closer to $10 once you add fries and a drink, you start comparing the experience against options that might be slightly more expensive but noticeably better.<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s never needed to win that comparison in the past. It just depended on customers not thinking about it at all.<\/p>\n To be clear: The economics here aren\u2019t crazy. Wages are up. Ingredients cost more. Franchises are businesses, not charities. Selling burgers for a dollar wasn\u2019t going to last forever.<\/p>\n But what companies can\u2019t control is how customers emotionally process the moment the change arrives. McDonald\u2019s didn\u2019t just raise prices\u2014it disrupted the unconscious habit that made it indispensable. And once people start treating a fast-food run as a calculated purchase instead of an automatic one, McDonald\u2019s puts itself in a completely different business than the one it built its brand on. That\u2019s something no company should ever do.<\/p>\n \u2014Jason Aten<\/em><\/p>\n
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