The deals of McDonald’s and other chains do not damage the reputation of the fast-food chain
Perhaps the best-known example of this is McDonald’s $5 meal, which the company said attracted more people to its restaurants last month.
But it seems that these great offers do not do much to convince people that fast food is not expensive.
That’s the finding of a new Morning Consult survey released Wednesday. The survey asked consumers each month this year whether they thought certain fast-food chains were “a good value for their money,” according to Morning Consult.
In July, significantly more respondents thought that fast food was good value for money than not – 43 percentage points more, to be precise.
However, that is almost 10 percentage points lower than in early 2020, before the pandemic and before inflation pushed up most food prices. The share of consumers who considered fast food to be good value for money has declined in the four years since then.
Crucially, the data shows there has been little change in recent months as restaurants began to roll out their low-cost meals.
“Unfortunately, these measures have not yet materially changed consumers’ perception of the value of the industry,” Lindsey Roeschke, travel and hospitality analyst at Morning Consult, told Business Insider.
Fast-food chains have raised prices over the past two years as general inflation drove up the cost of many goods. The pace of price increases has slowed since then, but prices remain high for many consumers.
The latest round of restaurant earnings showed that brands from Starbucks to KFC in the U.S. reported declining quarterly comparable-store sales, leading some analysts to believe that fast-food chains will need to cut prices.
Several fast-food chains have promoted value-priced menu items and dishes this year. Taco Bell introduced its new Cravings Value Menu in January, which includes ten items that cost $3 or less. Burger King brought back its $5 menu in May and plans to sell it through October.
However, the number of customers who would generally be more likely to buy fast food still rose by less than one percentage point in July, Morning Consult also found.
Overall, however, diners surveyed gave fast-food restaurants higher marks for value for money than fast-casual chains such as Sweetgreen and Chipotle, Roeschke said, suggesting that some customers prefer fast food to other options.
McDonald’s had originally planned to offer its $5 menu for a month starting in late June, but the chain has since announced that most of its restaurants will offer the deal through August.
Joseph Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said on a conference call in July that the deal was changing the way consumers — particularly low-income diners — thought about the chain’s value. “It really worked and accomplished exactly what we wanted,” Erlinger said of the $5 menu.
While there is evidence that McDonald’s saw an increase in customers after introducing the $5 menu, convincing more customers that fast food is good business may require more than a month-or-two special on the menu, Roeschke says.
“It’s really hard to change the perception of value that quickly,” especially given the “overwhelming familiarity that people have with a brand like McDonald’s,” she said.
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