Brendan Baber of Kenosha, Wisconsin, the adoptive parent of a six-year-old girl, has to juggle housework, laundry and the endless battle over what to make for dinner. One battleground has been recurring in this war lately: the McDonald's drive-thru.
His adopted daughter, whom he and his wife are raising with their three other children, thinks McDonald's is “high cuisine,” said Baber, 57, a content marketer with a low six-figure salary. So he finds himself, week after week, in the glow of the Golden Arches, watching the general rise on the digital menu board.
“You can no longer buy large fries for under five dollars,” he says. “And every kid wants damn fries.” He noticed that prices really started to rise during pandemic, “where all the supply chains went to hell” and they never came back.
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Ralph Severson witnessed the same story from the cab of a work truck. At 60 years old, the licensed contractor runs FM Pro Remodelers in New Albany, Indiana. “Construction and skilled trades are based on fast food,” he says. “We eat fast food almost every day.”
Menu favorites like the Big Mac have kept hungry Americans alive for decades
ADAM GRAY FOR TIME
However, lately the crew looks at the prices on the board and keeps moving the truck. “We will eat McD's if there are no other convenient options,” Severson says. “But the value is gone.”
For some Americans, McDonald's is an occasional pleasure. For decades, however, it was one of the few places where a family on a budget, a crew of low-wage workers, or someone living out of their car could count on a hot meal for just a few dollars. Now they don't know where to eat.
As Americans struggle with rising rents, gas prices and grocery bills (which are about 25 percent higher than before the pandemic), the question is whether even McDonald's has become out of reach for the people who rely on it most.
In 2000, a Big Mac cost about $2.24. By mid-2025, the average price had risen to $6. Adjusted for general inflation, that $2.24 sandwich in 2000 would be worth about $4.22 in today's dollars. In other words, McDonald's signature burger costs about 40 percent more than it did 25 years ago.
Other menu options have also grown. A FinanceBuzz analysis found that the cost of a quarter pound with cheese flour has more than doubled over the decade, from $5.39 in 2014 to $11.99 in 2024. The ten-serving McNuggets lunch went from $7.19 in 2019 to $9.19 in 2024.
Prices for ten popular menu items at McDonald's have roughly doubled since 2014, far outpacing the roughly 31 percent rise in overall consumer prices over that period, according to a FinanceBuzz analysis. McDonald's disputes those findings, saying its own data shows average U.S. menu prices have risen about 40 percent since 2019, broadly consistent with higher labor and food costs.
On Monday President Trump tried to turn this anxiety into stagecraft. At the McDonald's Impact Summit in Washington, he spoke to franchise owners and suppliers, calling the chain “70 years of American greatness” and calling himself one of its “most loyal customers.”
President Trump works behind a counter in Pennsylvania during the campaign last year.
DOUG MILLS/GETTY IMAGES
The event was billed as a conversation about affordability, and Trump turned the food chain into a broader promise to “make America affordable again,” touting his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” with promises such as no tip tax and more generous overtime rules. In essence, the Golden Arches have become a campaign backdrop: a way to argue that his policies will ease commodity price shock at the very moment when McDonald's own data shows prices continuing to rise.
The public doesn't seem convinced. “Nearly eight in 10 Americans view fast food as a luxury because of rising prices, and this is a relatively new phenomenon,” says Matt Schultz, consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. “This suggests that many Americans are definitely feeling financially strapped.”
The disappointment also shows in satisfaction scores: McDonald's ranked last among the 23 largest fast food chains in the 2025 US Customer Satisfaction Index for the third year in a row.
Part of the reason McDonald's is more expensive is that some of its own expenses have actually gone awry, mostly due to reasons outside of its direct control, including higher prices for beef and chicken, and sharp increases in wages and benefits. But for someone like Severson, the nuances don't matter much when he sees the total on the screen. “We have all felt the cost of inflation, but how did the dollar menu become a three-dollar menu in just a couple of years?” he asks.
Many former regulars make the same calculations. John Riser, 42, who lives in Sulfur, Kentucky and works in digital marketing, puts it bluntly. “No one can eat a fast food meal for less than $10 now. A few years ago, that amount could feed four people,” he says.
McDonald's isn't the only offender. The same FinanceBuzz study found that Popeyes' prices have risen an average of 86 percent and Taco Bell's by about 81 percent over the past decade, with Chipotle not far behind, up about 75 percent. Wendy's briefly held the title as the most valuable major fast-food chain in 2022 with an average menu price of $6.63 after a 35% jump in just over a year. If McDonald's doesn't seem cheap anymore, it's partly because almost no national chain does.
McDonald's executives know they have a perception problem. Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski acknowledged that McDonald's “wasn't focused enough on cost” and says the company is trying to re-establish itself as a low-cost option in a tightening economy.
A fast food restaurant is promoting special offers in an attempt to attract customers who are put off by rising prices.
ALAMY
Their solution was to offer a range of deals. McDonald's launched a wave of limited-time $5 set meals in the U.S. and this year retooled its McValue lineup to include several $5 and $6 meal deals to win back customers on a budget.
However, increasingly, great deals are happening behind the login screen, and the McDonald's app offers some exclusive deals not available locally.
Many people don't want to chase digital coupons. Baber's eldest daughter constantly tells him that what he is doing is wrong. “She's like, 'Just use their incredibly frustrating app and you won't have to pay five bucks for a big potato,'” he says. Baber wants no part of this. “I find their app to be quite user-hostile,” he says, and believes the best deals “are short-lived anyway, just meant to drive adoption. So don't bother.”
Schultz says the tension between the labyrinth of offerings and the basic need for something cheap and satisfying is why fast food has become a symbol of the affordability crisis.
In the meantime, Baber will continue to do the math in line, deciding whether the latest food offerings promise “enough food to feed a hungry child for six dollars” or whether it will be a night of noodles and complaints.
“I'm not asking McDonald's to save my life,” he said, “and I understand there's no budget that can survive on eating out every night. But I'd like to say yes to my kids without blowing my week's budget on overpriced fries.”
