Because McDonalds is publicly traded, there’s no such thing as “insisting” that performance is fine when they’re not, the sales facts are made public. The compa

Because McDonalds is publicly traded, there’s no such thing as “insisting” that performance is fine when they’re not, the sales facts are made public. The company indeed has seen profits recently that were missing from 2014-2020. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/reve... It is entirely possible for the number of hamburgers sold to go down while the price goes us, and for MCD revenues to stay even or earn more money. That might lead to a hollowing out of their customer base, and could lead to eventual decline, but there’s no guarantee of that. McDonalds also has a lot of incentives to try to escape the rock-bottom commodity pricing, if it can, and regardless of quality, some companies do charge “market rates”. Apple and Starbucks come to mind. Starbucks is a good example of a company that took a cheap commodity product and pushed the price up considerably without suffering decline; the primary consequences were mountains of profit.