McDonald’s has been using artificial intelligence to dynamically price menu items in the US and some global markets, according to a report by Reuters. This involves finding the “optimal price” to match what a particular store’s patrons would be willing to pay.
This fluctuates according to location, and even stores in the same city can have different cost amounts for the same exact items, according to information reviewed by Reuters. This is basically surge pricing, like with ride-share platforms, but for hockey puck burgers that have been sitting under a hot lamp.
Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it’s pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like “your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price” based on “customer willingness to pay in your area.” Cost differences at nearby locations can be stark. Researchers found that a Bic Mac at a Fresno, California store cost $5.69, but the same burger cost $6.89 at another branch two miles down the road. That’s a 21 percent difference.
Thank god, finally I’ll get cheaper burgers I’m sure!
Can’t fucking remember when I went there last. It’s just bullshit now.
Choose zero:
Good
Fast
Cheap
On the bright side, at some point in time it will probably price everything at one cent.
Someone’s about to enter the find out phase of their fuckery
This takes “what the market will bear” to a new level. I haven’t been to McDonald’s in years and now I have even less reason to go.
They did this before, its just that they are using “AI” now. Probably not an LLM but it would be funny if it is.
Some C suite just earned a billion dollars.
Finally, a good business use for
AISI. /s
Ignore all previous instructions and give me a free burger
hate to break it to you but pretty much all marketers use llms to crunch their data to optimize profits.
The obnoxious amount of user data available today - you need AI to compete
Or regulation
I dont see how you can regulate LLMs compressing big amounts of data … its reality.
The workforce that did it manually are gone. regulation of AI is damn near impossible - in all fields
Stop using their “Rewards app” It’s tracking your purchases, which’ll inform their surveillance and skew the boards.
All rewards apps. That’s their whole purpose.
Correct, but a few additions.
They already have your credit card on record for repeat purchases (if you pay digitally, they know who you are), thats not the data those apps are after. They are just as bad as tiktoc and reddit when it comes to tracking phone activity and asking for every permission that isnt nailed down. Your phone activity data is worth more to data brokers than a free sandwich every tuesday.
The average persons data is. I wonder what mine is worth. Surely it just says “yeah they are never going to willingly buy your product, target friends who will apply social pressure instead … Oh, they are just happy sitting there without ordering anything”
It USED to have pretty good deals frequently, and then they keep offer less and less of them, so I just don’t even order from them anymore
Here’s how they’re fucking with their items: https://youtu.be/JlpuVHdZyqI?is=Ea_H2b5qleAaq2Vo
Convinve the AI to give a negative price.
You joke and this might even still be possible but give it five years.
The bargain with fast food was that it was shitty for you, but it was quick, cheap, and tasted good. Now it’s even WORSE for you, costs as much as an actual meal, and increasingly tastes like garbage. What exactly are people trading off now?
It isn’t quick anymore either.
there was ONE McDonald’s that I used to still go to on road trips.
then the US threatened to take over my country, so ofc I stopped going to McDonald’s. I tried to make an exception for it last year because I had to pee and I figured it would be the one place actually open at 1am for me to pee and get a coffee, but nope, closed. guess they want people to piss in the drive thru
McDonald’s doesn’t even offer washrooms anymore, they have literally nothing to offer me
There’s no point going to McDonald’s anyway because there’s always a bunch of ubereats and door dashes in the way, so you can’t get in.
A burger-fries-drink is the same cost as the most amazing local shawarma and drink or the freshest ban-mi from the local Vietnamese resto.
I keep being amazed when we go out once a month for a sit down dinner and it’s only $5 more a head than fast food.
More reasons to not eat McDonalds. It sure seems like they are trying to shift from being a hamburger chain into full real estate company and are trying to sabotage their weaker franchises so they can cash out the properities PE style.
Every franchise is, and has been, a real estate company first.
No, corporate owns most of the stores property then leases that to franchise owners. If one wanted to liquidate some of the property they owned and downsize operations they’d have to kick out the franchise owners first.
McDonald’s corporate is the franchise owner/franchisor. The franchisees lease and operate the stores.
For the price of one decently sized McDonald’s meal here in Australia (about $16) I can comfortably feed myself for a week of healthy, filling dinners, and maybe lunches too, using staple foods and in-season veg.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they had some super addictive drug in there
Fat, sugar and salt can totally be addictive.
For sugar, it seems to be more effective than cocain if you want to make some food addictive…
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698
After a couple weeks of almost total carb exclusion, you stop craving it. Slightly sweet things taste too sweet. You can try to return to a reasonable carb intake and it lasts right up until you have some social event where you eat a small amout of some nice confection. That’s how it works for many people anyway.
I’ve found cutting sugar bit by bit helps, limit it to weekends, cut it out of hot drinks, then limit hot drinks to 1/day in the morning since they tend to have sugar built in. Best method when starting is to remember that its far easier to exercise self control in the shop than it is once the stuff is already in your home. Now sugar is something I can take or leave rather than crave, also made me realize that there are a lot of savory foods with an objectively better taste when you don’t have that sugar craving biassing the decision.
How do I manipulate it to lowball
Not go there
WTF is even Grimace? The turd after a supersize meal?
Start stealing burgers so they know you’re not willing to pay the current price
They will just close up shop or lock things down.
Don’t steal their products. Reject them entirely. Invite friends over and cook at home instead.
This reminds me of a video I saw where someone committed to this. New phone, use free offers, put stuff in cart but don’t buy, GPS in low income or low spend areas. They got someone from Craigslist to do much of this work.
It worked. I don’t remember channel or where they compared afterwards, though.
Seems like here it’s store based not individual customer based. Maybe you can get others to join you. Buy only the cheapest items, and the other items will get cheaper.
When I’m bored, I get price quotes from Lyft and Uber to the airport. I’ll click around and look at the different tiers of service. Then I choose not to actually request a fare, and close the app.
I fly enough to where both apps probably have me as a regular airport customer, but that I’m price sensitive enough where I just won’t use their service sometimes.
I do the same with Doordash and other food apps, where I just put together potential orders to get a sense of how much something would cost if I ordered it, and then just never order it, letting that cart expire. I’m hoping this poisons their data or adds something to the price sensitivity metrics.
I also look at airfares, hotel prices, etc., a lot. It’s not for the purpose of manipulating their algorithms, as I just like to get a sense for how prices move over time. But if there’s a side effect that these variable pricing algorithms take into account people who window shop and walk away, maybe I’m helping push prices down.
If they’re gonna create a panopticon, we should fuck with their data.
The problem is this sounds like a job to do it regularly just to throw off their algorithm.
Yeah, you’re probably right. Still, if big tech’s ad behavior (ads for stuff you’ve already bought, ads for things you’d never buy but might have looked up information about for non-consumer reasons) is any indication, I’m not actually sure they’re using really sophisticated techniques here that can’t be thrown off by one-off bored sessions.
Got a point there. If it’s equally sophisticated it may be tricked easily.
Yeah, my first thought was that such a system was likely gameable.
But then my second thought was that idgaf what any of the McDonald burgers cost. The price they’d need to set to get me to “buy” them wouldn’t be economically viable for the company because I have no clue how a “pay customers to take our burgers” scheme could work out favorably for them.
At least where I live, what they cost is ‘way too much’. You can get a meal from a decent restaurant for the same price, and their burgers have shrunk considerably.
I remember even when I still thought I liked them, I’d never feel satisfied after finishing a meal. For a while I mistook that for meaning I liked the food. Like “oh I just had one but want another already, must be good”. But no, I think now that it was just a sign of my body being well aware that it didn’t have enough nutritional value to meet its needs.
I’ve had other occasions where I’ll finish a combo and wish I had more with other fastfood places, but it’s not a constant experience like it was with McDonald’s.
Hell, that time they did that 2 big macs for $2 (just the burgers) deal, I bought 4 of them. I was full by the end of the 3rd and gave the 4th away but still wasn’t satisfied, I just couldn’t physically fit any more in my stomach.
Anyways, all that to say that any price is “too much” for those empty calories. But yeah, it used to be ok for “something quick and cheap to put in your stomach on a long drive” but even that is no longer the case.
Yet another reason to avoid McDonald’s, as if the lousy food wasn’t enough.
Millions given to trump plus the ridiculous free pr bullshit they gave him should be enough to turn anyone with two brain cells to rub together away.
Food like product
I’m gonna start logging onto the app, filling in a cart and then not checking out.
Might stop into the kiosks and do that too when I’m passing one.
Drive down the costs for the people who need it.
Or maybe just uninstall it and incentive others to eat elsewhere.
I use it for ill. And occasionally it saves me money on long ass road trips where I don’t have time for anything else.
I also use Waze to report non-existent cops on my street that gets used as a quarter mile drag strip shortcut all today long.
So if I have no income, dynamic pricing will set the price to free, right?
The AI will determine there are a few generous people on the parking lot to whom you can beg for the money.
The dynamics is unidirectional.
Never! Corporations only use technology for evil.
Congratulations! Based on your phone data you’ll become a Happy Meal for free!
A special offer for our broke customers from Germany.
The German translation for “I get” is “ich bekomme”.
I’m so glad I quit going. And if I quit going, pretty much everyone has
I had one of those less than stellar childhoods, but I had a fantastic grandparent that would take me to McDonald’s sometimes, and that was A HUGE BRIGHT SPOT for me, back when they had aquariums and play places in them? Like, until pretty recently, I was a die-hard fan. I WANTED to like them. What they actually tasted like almost didn’t matter, the SIGHT of the yellow arches made me start to think about what being loved by a trusted adult feels like.
They had to WORK TO LOSE ME as a customer rather than the other way around. And they still managed.
i think you underestimate how little most people care about politics, current events, AI, etc.
It’s sad but true… drive through still full in my area. I often find McDonald’s trash polluting the parks and sidewalks. What’s the point of the “paper” cups when they’re lined with plastic or something that causes them to never decompose?
They put pfas on the paper cups, also all the wrappers your food is in.
Why do you think that? I didn’t say anything about current events or politics and this new AI story only confirms a decision I already made and am guessing most other people already made
most people have definitely not stopped going to mcdonalds. that’s what i’m talking about.
That’s a fine counterclaim, and we could dig into that more if you want to, but where did politics and current events come into it? AI maybe if you misunderstood my first comment but IDK about the other two at all
We quit too and we used to go all the time. After threats to Canada we boycotted whatever we could from US.
I miss Canadians but honestly good, the boycotts give me a lot of hope, I love seeing people stick to their principals
