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I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu screens that visibly tell you to hu

I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu screens that visibly tell you to hurry the f*k up and choose the product. Not to mention customers vying with delivery drivers for orders. I think the problem applies to all-income customers.

detritus 11mo ago
Also, £4.20 for a Double Bacon & Egg McMuffin is just ... no. Why? I could swear it wasn't that long ago it was under £3. For a fiver I can get a better 'real' Bacon & Egg bap from an independent.
- walthamstow 11mo ago
  I paid £5.09 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal with coffee and a hash brown this morning. I think that's pretty reasonable, especially for London.
  - somenameforme 11mo ago
    I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start cooking at home, because think of what you are buying: - one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?) - one slice of cheese - one egg - one slice of ham - one cup of coffee - one hashbrown £5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost. But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is packed full of preservatives and other additives and artificial ingredients.
    - walthamstow 11mo ago
      It was hot and tasty and delivered near-instantly to my car at 6am. There's no way the fair price for that is less than a fiver. If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really say what £5 is or isn't worth anyway.
      - stavros 11mo ago
        Yeeeeah I had a £4.50 coke yesterday. Getting a meal for that price is pretty good, even if meal is in quotes.
    - plorkyeran 11mo ago
      The price for each of those at my local supermarket when buying the low quality option in bulk: English Muffin: 70¢ Slice of cheese: 40¢ Egg: 40¢ Slice of Ham: 50¢ Hash browns: 40¢ Coffee: $1? In total $3.40. £5.09 for that in hot, prepared form ready to eat sounds cheap to me, not expensive.
      - nutjob2 11mo ago
        I calculated how much I spend on food, shopping at Lidl in the EU in a mid range expensive country, and I pay about 3 euros per day. That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one of those is smaller than the others) Admittedly I've optimized my menu.
        knowitnone3 11mo ago
        but you don't say what you buy because eating only potatoes really is cheap
        nutjob2 11mo ago
        I do eat them, but they're not that cheap. Oats, brown sugar, milk, (frozen) french fries, chicken burgers, "American" cheese, gnocchi, tomato basil pasta sauce, turkey nuggets, tinned beans, xv olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chicken salt, seedless grapes
      - FearNotDaniel 11mo ago
        Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?
        somenameforme 11mo ago
        I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters. I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television. Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
    - joshvm 11mo ago
      The UK comparison for home cooking vs fast food breakfast should be really be Wetherspoon. Spoons makes a solid stodgy full English breakfast and bottomless coffee for 5-7 quid depending on the size. Classic hangover food, and you can start the morning where the night ended. Obviously you can beat it with home cooking, but the calorie value for a sit down meal out is compelling: 1300 cals for 7.50 (more if you go for hot chocolate).
      - hexbin010 11mo ago
        Wetherspoons is amazing and a great replacement for McDonalds. They bring the food to your table, with cutlery, on a plate and you get unlimited coffee and tap water. I paid £4.78 for a muffin of sauage+bacon+2 eggs+hash brown and unlimited coffee this morning. You got to choose very carefully from the menu as lot of things aren't good value.
  - dingaling 11mo ago
    £5.09 is about 25 minutes work at National Minimum Wage ( £12.21 per hour ), about 5.6% of daily income at NMW and standard working hours. A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it does seem to provide decent value.
    - walthamstow 11mo ago
      For £5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and rice for nothing.
    - ben_w 11mo ago
      On the kcal/£ basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans: cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487 kcal/100g, £0.22/100g, about £0.15 for as many kcal as that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100 https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100 On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.
- pixl97 11mo ago
  You sure it's still a fiver and not up to 7. Even going to the grocer the price for raw goods is way up.
- ta12653421 11mo ago
  ...well, wait: At McDonalds this is a high price for bad quality - in a good restaurant it may be cheap :-)
f1shy 11mo ago
My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can’t. Maybe I’m getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse now than say 5 or 10 years ago.
- esseph 11mo ago
  Seems to be exactly the same quality at least here in the US, that it has always been.
  - Freedom2 11mo ago
    In some ways the rest of the world's McDonald's are simply plummeting to the low quality of those in the US.
    - ethbr1 11mo ago
      As of ~1 year ago, American-fast-food-in-France was still noticeably better than -in-America.
    - FearNotDaniel 11mo ago
      Austria resident checking in - since I moved here I noticed the quality of McD’s is way, way better than in the UK. And apart from the regular menu being a whole different experience, you’ve got great quality coffee and cakes. It’s a whole world of difference.
    - stefanfisk 11mo ago
      Here in Sweden they changed their recipes a few years ago. I can’t stand the Big Mac now. Previously it at least felt kind of fresh although low quality. Now it has a weird freeze dried sensation to the vegetables :/
    - stavros 11mo ago
      Here in Greece, we have so much good quality street food that McDonald's is street trash by comparison. I don't consider it food, there are only about eight or nine restaurants in the entire country and I think most people go there because of the novelty.
ceejayoz 11mo ago
The app drives me crazy on the occasions I do have to use it. Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can... pick fries again. Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.
- tzs 11mo ago
  Yeah, the McD app is ridiculous. For some items it gives me an add to order dialog and then an add to bag dialog (I might have the order of those two swapped). I'm not sure what the distinction is between adding to the order and adding to the bag. It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I make a sandwich at home, order a couple cookies plus the free fries in the app, then go pick them at the McD that is about half a mile from my home. Occasionally though instead of making a sandwich I decide I'd like to use my McD reward points to get a free burger. But you can't get both a rewards points item and a deal item on the same order. I end up doing a rewards points order for a free burger, picking that up at the drive through, parking, then doing a cookies plus free fries deal order, and going through the drive through again to get that. What's the point of not allowing both a rewards item and a deal item on the same order? If the rule was you could only use one reward or deal per day, then it would make some sense.
  - porridgeraisin 11mo ago
    That's funny
  - b212 11mo ago
    Loved that story!
  - stavros 11mo ago
    Why do you go through the drive through twice instead of just pretending to be the next car as well?
silisili 11mo ago
At least from my perspective, COVID broke everything. People are more awful, quality is more awful, and prices are way up. I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen seemingly overnight.
- conception 11mo ago
  Both are tied together. The stock market didn’t double during Covid because we were making more. The US printed a lot of money. A lot.
- ta9000 11mo ago
  The secret is to eat out less often and spend more when you do. Service is fantastic still at higher end restaurants.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    Probably varies where you are, but in the UK (especially outside London) there are lots of places you can have reasonably good food an service at a decent price. A lot of pubs with good food now, for example.
    - hexbin010 11mo ago
      For £15-35 for a main course sure. Even the weekday specials are £18-22. Sandwiches £15. Food is usually just average and service below average Not the south Gastro pubs are mostly full of land owners, rich pensioners and dual income high earners...
    - ta9000 11mo ago
      If Dishoom would come to the US I would be so happy.
- goku12 11mo ago
  > I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize the average time and cost of doing it, while still having access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though slightly repetitive. But if you really want to indulge, setting aside a couple of hours will give you dishes that taste way beyond anything you can afford from outside. Some people are natural born chefs with an intuitive understanding of tastebuds. But if you're like me in that you're clueless about it, there are still some exceptional recipes you can steal online. I treat cooking more like chemistry, insisting follow exact measurements and time. It still works out really well for me. You might even tweak the recipe over 4 or 5 repetitions to your at most satisfaction. Anybody who hasn't given it a try really should, at least once.
porjo 11mo ago
Australian here and the sentiment is the same. Drive-through is tolerable but dine-in is not pleasant due to basic cleaning like sweeping, wiping of tables not being done.
- bombcar 11mo ago
  Around here dine-in costs the same or more than the local diner; why would you do it? The only saving grace is the happy meal and that’s getting too expensive now, also.
- throaway123123 11mo ago
  Canadian who agrees and will add that 95% of the employees are also new immigrants which really rankles us who have had to look hard for any kind of unskilled job!
fellowniusmonk 11mo ago
"They're poor, they don't care a about basic human dignity." - McDonald's CEO probably. It truly is the most "Shove this in your slop hole you wretch" experience in all of fast food.
- silisili 11mo ago
  It's pretty hilarious because your comment is exactly their goal. McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers. They do not want to compete in the middle income space, as they don't visit as often and there's ton more(and better) competition. Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back. Dire straits ahead for them, they've priced themselves into a place they don't want to be nor will they be able to succeed in.
  - fellowniusmonk 11mo ago
    I used to eat there when I was young and poor. I used to stop at ones off the highway if I was taking a road trip. I used to grab the occasional soft serve just for nostalgia sake. Now I'll hit the gas stations deli sandwiches or roller dogs before setting foot in the attached McDonalds.
  - ndiddy 11mo ago
    I don’t like how the CEO is portraying this as something solely caused by outside market forces. In the last 10 years, their profit margin has gone from ~17% to ~32%. The pricing is an intentional decision that they could choose to change at any time.
  - listenallyall 11mo ago
    Terrible take. Of course they want middle-income customers, that's a big part of why they raised prices, because they thought middle-income would absorb them. And they arent entirely wrong - those drive-thru lines are still miles long at peak times, mostly parents getting an entire family's dinner. However middle-income is still price sensitive and notice when $30 becomes $50+. Executives talk about appealing to "value-oriented" consumers (i.e. almost everybody). "traffic among higher-income customers continues to grow across the fast-food sector, increasing “nearly double digits” in the quarter, he (Kempczinski) said" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/05/mcdonalds-losing-low-income-customer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/05/mcdonalds... It's actually Wendy's right now suffering, vs rivals McD and BK: "Wendy's (WEN) same-restaurant sales, or sales of restaurants open at least 15 months, declined from a year ago for a third straight quarter, while those of rivals McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Restaurant Brands International Inc.'s (QSR) Burger King increased over the past two quarters." https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251107156/wendys-is-still-losing-to-rivals-like-mcdonalds-but-not-by-as-much-as-feared https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251107156/wen...
pjmlp 11mo ago
I only used McDonald's in an emergency, if there is no where else to eat, and having to now use those screens, I must be really desperate. Better replace the kitchen with cooking robots as well then.
lewiscollard 11mo ago
From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not know how long it would have actually taken because at that point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed even more of my time. McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore. I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't give a shit either.
- lumost 11mo ago
  I do wonder if the US is soon to experience a regression in productivity due to compensation practices. If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start to reduce effort to match?
  - Tanoc 11mo ago
    That's already happening. Roadsides aren't being cleaned up because the local DOTs aren't being paid enough. That leaves fallen rocks, mud buildup from floods, tree branches, and overgrown bushes very close to the roadway. Grocery stores have empty shelves because they don't get enough stockers. If you go to the meats aisle it's a good chance you'll either find some pork that's started to turn yellow or some beef that's started to turn brown because nobody wants to dig through the freezer. They get told the meat's old, they find the visible one, and the put a price reduced sticker on it. Walk into a hospital and the grating at the entryway will be filled with mud, the baseboards along the walls in the hallways will be scuffed to hell, and the walls will have scrapes taken out of them because the maintenance staff aren't being paid enough to care. Go into a bank and you'll have one teller working both the drive through and the front desk, and they'll take their time getting to you because the drive-through counts towards their statistics since the interaction with the drop off point is tracked. They aren't paid enough to work back and forth in the down time when either is doing something the teller doesn't need to be involved in. Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-specialized and non-salaried jobs.
bromuro 11mo ago
Here in Spain i have had only good experiences and i love sometimes going to McDonald!
- SapporoChris 11mo ago
  Here in Japan I have only had good experiences, but I can't say I love going to McDonalds. The breakfast offerings are decent and it's extremely fast service. During peak times seats will be around 95 percent full but the restaurant remains very clean. I think the cleanliness in part is due to the patrons being responsible.
  - linguae 11mo ago
    I’m an American living in the San Francisco Bay Area who travels to Japan twice per year. McDonald’s in Japan is better than McDonald’s in America. McDonald’s in Japan not only is cleaner and has better customer service, but is cheaper. McDonald’s in America wasn’t always expensive; I was in high school and college in the 2000s when the dollar menu had double cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and small orders of fries. The regular menu didn’t break the bank, either. Prices started shooting upward in the 2010s; first the Double Cheeseburger on the dollar menu got replaced with the McDouble (one slice of cheese instead of two), then it exited the dollar menu and became 2 for $3, then 2 for $4. But after COVID, prices exploded. I remember the first time seeing a fast food combo meal selling for more than $10 sometime about five years ago, but it was the most expensive meal on the menu. Nowadays in my area $10-$12 combo meals are the norm. It’s sad and maddening; my salary hasn’t risen at this level! Meanwhile in Japan, I could get a Big Mac meal for around ¥800. Even when the yen was strong, $8 beats $11. At today’s yen valuation ($5.09), it’s more than half the cost, and with better customer service at that! I make six figures but I feel like fast food prices in California are a ripoff ($10+ for a crappy meal? No thanks!), and so I quit eating out except when traveling or for entertainment, such as hanging out with friends.
- bombcar 11mo ago
  Spain has McBeer, right? Like Portugal? Different world!
globular-toast 11mo ago
I'd rather just skip a meal than resort to McDonald's, but I've noticed in so many places there are more deliveries going out than people eating in. This seems to go for any place that does delivery. It's even hard to read reviews for places as so many of them are rating the delivery when the food in question doesn't transport well.
mc32 11mo ago
Seeing pictures of Cardiff McD's afterhours with disheveled, boorish patrons and rubbish strewn about, no-one would want to patronize them: https://hollyhughesgraphics.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/maciej-dakowicz-cardiff-after-dark/ https://hollyhughesgraphics.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/maciej-...
- Nexxxeh 11mo ago
  There's at least two in the Cardiff City Centre, one on St Mary St and one on Queen St. Having used both at normal and at peak pisshead hours, they're both alright. Not great, not a disaster. Slightly understaffed, and occasionally short on English language skills, but there's not an issue if you want hot food (inc vegetarian and vegan) or drinks at a daft hour.
duxup 11mo ago
What is strange is McDonalds at one point was by far the most consistent fast food place in the US. Personally it wasn't my thing but it was always a step above all the other chains. That hasn't been the case in a long time, quality control and customer service has fallen to be just as bad as any other place.
Nexxxeh 11mo ago
I'm in the UK and have McDonalds semi-regularly. A few times a month at least. Get a receipt, fill out the online feedback form, get a code. Put the code in the app, get an offer for £2.99 sandwhich (McPlant, Big Mac, whatever the chicken thing is) and either fries or a salad. £2.99 for a McPlant and fries at 3am is a godsend.
hexbin010 11mo ago
Yup. McDonald's in the UK is a truly horrible experience that only "addicts" still put up with Staff barely even look at you, they're miserable, fries are only 50% full, orders always wrong, no please or thanks or sorry for keeping you waiting 20 mins in the bay for a hamburger etc. Stopped going ages ago

detritus 11mo ago

Also, £4.20 for a Double Bacon & Egg McMuffin is just ... no. Why? I could swear it wasn't that long ago it was under £3. For a fiver I can get a better 'real' Bacon & Egg bap from an independent.

walthamstow 11mo ago
I paid £5.09 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal with coffee and a hash brown this morning. I think that's pretty reasonable, especially for London.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start cooking at home, because think of what you are buying: - one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?) - one slice of cheese - one egg - one slice of ham - one cup of coffee - one hashbrown £5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost. But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is packed full of preservatives and other additives and artificial ingredients.
  - walthamstow 11mo ago
    It was hot and tasty and delivered near-instantly to my car at 6am. There's no way the fair price for that is less than a fiver. If you've never lived here, I'm not sure you can really say what £5 is or isn't worth anyway.
    - stavros 11mo ago
      Yeeeeah I had a £4.50 coke yesterday. Getting a meal for that price is pretty good, even if meal is in quotes.
  - plorkyeran 11mo ago
    The price for each of those at my local supermarket when buying the low quality option in bulk: English Muffin: 70¢ Slice of cheese: 40¢ Egg: 40¢ Slice of Ham: 50¢ Hash browns: 40¢ Coffee: $1? In total $3.40. £5.09 for that in hot, prepared form ready to eat sounds cheap to me, not expensive.
    - nutjob2 11mo ago
      I calculated how much I spend on food, shopping at Lidl in the EU in a mid range expensive country, and I pay about 3 euros per day. That's about the same as $3.40, but for 4 full meals (one of those is smaller than the others) Admittedly I've optimized my menu.
      - knowitnone3 11mo ago
        but you don't say what you buy because eating only potatoes really is cheap
        nutjob2 11mo ago
        I do eat them, but they're not that cheap. Oats, brown sugar, milk, (frozen) french fries, chicken burgers, "American" cheese, gnocchi, tomato basil pasta sauce, turkey nuggets, tinned beans, xv olive oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, chicken salt, seedless grapes
    - FearNotDaniel 11mo ago
      Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?
      - somenameforme 11mo ago
        I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters. I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television. Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime
  - joshvm 11mo ago
    The UK comparison for home cooking vs fast food breakfast should be really be Wetherspoon. Spoons makes a solid stodgy full English breakfast and bottomless coffee for 5-7 quid depending on the size. Classic hangover food, and you can start the morning where the night ended. Obviously you can beat it with home cooking, but the calorie value for a sit down meal out is compelling: 1300 cals for 7.50 (more if you go for hot chocolate).
    - hexbin010 11mo ago
      Wetherspoons is amazing and a great replacement for McDonalds. They bring the food to your table, with cutlery, on a plate and you get unlimited coffee and tap water. I paid £4.78 for a muffin of sauage+bacon+2 eggs+hash brown and unlimited coffee this morning. You got to choose very carefully from the menu as lot of things aren't good value.
- dingaling 11mo ago
  £5.09 is about 25 minutes work at National Minimum Wage ( £12.21 per hour ), about 5.6% of daily income at NMW and standard working hours. A bacon & egg McMuffin provides 336 kcal, which is 13% of an adult male's RDI. So on a purely kcals:price level it does seem to provide decent value.
  - walthamstow 11mo ago
    For £5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and rice for nothing.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    On the kcal/£ basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans: cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487 kcal/100g, £0.22/100g, about £0.15 for as many kcal as that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100 https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100 On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.
pixl97 11mo ago
You sure it's still a fiver and not up to 7. Even going to the grocer the price for raw goods is way up.
ta12653421 11mo ago
...well, wait: At McDonalds this is a high price for bad quality - in a good restaurant it may be cheap :-)

f1shy 11mo ago

My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can’t. Maybe I’m getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse now than say 5 or 10 years ago.

esseph 11mo ago
Seems to be exactly the same quality at least here in the US, that it has always been.
- Freedom2 11mo ago
  In some ways the rest of the world's McDonald's are simply plummeting to the low quality of those in the US.
  - ethbr1 11mo ago
    As of ~1 year ago, American-fast-food-in-France was still noticeably better than -in-America.
  - FearNotDaniel 11mo ago
    Austria resident checking in - since I moved here I noticed the quality of McD’s is way, way better than in the UK. And apart from the regular menu being a whole different experience, you’ve got great quality coffee and cakes. It’s a whole world of difference.
  - stefanfisk 11mo ago
    Here in Sweden they changed their recipes a few years ago. I can’t stand the Big Mac now. Previously it at least felt kind of fresh although low quality. Now it has a weird freeze dried sensation to the vegetables :/
  - stavros 11mo ago
    Here in Greece, we have so much good quality street food that McDonald's is street trash by comparison. I don't consider it food, there are only about eight or nine restaurants in the entire country and I think most people go there because of the novelty.

ceejayoz 11mo ago

The app drives me crazy on the occasions I do have to use it. Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can... pick fries again. Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.

tzs 11mo ago
Yeah, the McD app is ridiculous. For some items it gives me an add to order dialog and then an add to bag dialog (I might have the order of those two swapped). I'm not sure what the distinction is between adding to the order and adding to the bag. It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I make a sandwich at home, order a couple cookies plus the free fries in the app, then go pick them at the McD that is about half a mile from my home. Occasionally though instead of making a sandwich I decide I'd like to use my McD reward points to get a free burger. But you can't get both a rewards points item and a deal item on the same order. I end up doing a rewards points order for a free burger, picking that up at the drive through, parking, then doing a cookies plus free fries deal order, and going through the drive through again to get that. What's the point of not allowing both a rewards item and a deal item on the same order? If the rule was you could only use one reward or deal per day, then it would make some sense.
- porridgeraisin 11mo ago
  That's funny
- b212 11mo ago
  Loved that story!
- stavros 11mo ago
  Why do you go through the drive through twice instead of just pretending to be the next car as well?

silisili 11mo ago

At least from my perspective, COVID broke everything. People are more awful, quality is more awful, and prices are way up. I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen seemingly overnight.

conception 11mo ago
Both are tied together. The stock market didn’t double during Covid because we were making more. The US printed a lot of money. A lot.
ta9000 11mo ago
The secret is to eat out less often and spend more when you do. Service is fantastic still at higher end restaurants.
- graemep 11mo ago
  Probably varies where you are, but in the UK (especially outside London) there are lots of places you can have reasonably good food an service at a decent price. A lot of pubs with good food now, for example.
  - hexbin010 11mo ago
    For £15-35 for a main course sure. Even the weekday specials are £18-22. Sandwiches £15. Food is usually just average and service below average Not the south Gastro pubs are mostly full of land owners, rich pensioners and dual income high earners...
  - ta9000 11mo ago
    If Dishoom would come to the US I would be so happy.
goku12 11mo ago
> I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service. I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize the average time and cost of doing it, while still having access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though slightly repetitive. But if you really want to indulge, setting aside a couple of hours will give you dishes that taste way beyond anything you can afford from outside. Some people are natural born chefs with an intuitive understanding of tastebuds. But if you're like me in that you're clueless about it, there are still some exceptional recipes you can steal online. I treat cooking more like chemistry, insisting follow exact measurements and time. It still works out really well for me. You might even tweak the recipe over 4 or 5 repetitions to your at most satisfaction. Anybody who hasn't given it a try really should, at least once.

porjo 11mo ago

Australian here and the sentiment is the same. Drive-through is tolerable but dine-in is not pleasant due to basic cleaning like sweeping, wiping of tables not being done.

bombcar 11mo ago
Around here dine-in costs the same or more than the local diner; why would you do it? The only saving grace is the happy meal and that’s getting too expensive now, also.
throaway123123 11mo ago
Canadian who agrees and will add that 95% of the employees are also new immigrants which really rankles us who have had to look hard for any kind of unskilled job!

fellowniusmonk 11mo ago

"They're poor, they don't care a about basic human dignity." - McDonald's CEO probably. It truly is the most "Shove this in your slop hole you wretch" experience in all of fast food.

silisili 11mo ago
It's pretty hilarious because your comment is exactly their goal. McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers. They do not want to compete in the middle income space, as they don't visit as often and there's ton more(and better) competition. Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back. Dire straits ahead for them, they've priced themselves into a place they don't want to be nor will they be able to succeed in.
- fellowniusmonk 11mo ago
  I used to eat there when I was young and poor. I used to stop at ones off the highway if I was taking a road trip. I used to grab the occasional soft serve just for nostalgia sake. Now I'll hit the gas stations deli sandwiches or roller dogs before setting foot in the attached McDonalds.
- ndiddy 11mo ago
  I don’t like how the CEO is portraying this as something solely caused by outside market forces. In the last 10 years, their profit margin has gone from ~17% to ~32%. The pricing is an intentional decision that they could choose to change at any time.
- listenallyall 11mo ago
  Terrible take. Of course they want middle-income customers, that's a big part of why they raised prices, because they thought middle-income would absorb them. And they arent entirely wrong - those drive-thru lines are still miles long at peak times, mostly parents getting an entire family's dinner. However middle-income is still price sensitive and notice when $30 becomes $50+. Executives talk about appealing to "value-oriented" consumers (i.e. almost everybody). "traffic among higher-income customers continues to grow across the fast-food sector, increasing “nearly double digits” in the quarter, he (Kempczinski) said" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/05/mcdonalds-losing-low-income-customer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/05/mcdonalds... It's actually Wendy's right now suffering, vs rivals McD and BK: "Wendy's (WEN) same-restaurant sales, or sales of restaurants open at least 15 months, declined from a year ago for a third straight quarter, while those of rivals McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Restaurant Brands International Inc.'s (QSR) Burger King increased over the past two quarters." https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251107156/wendys-is-still-losing-to-rivals-like-mcdonalds-but-not-by-as-much-as-feared https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251107156/wen...

pjmlp 11mo ago

I only used McDonald's in an emergency, if there is no where else to eat, and having to now use those screens, I must be really desperate. Better replace the kitchen with cooking robots as well then.

lewiscollard 11mo ago

From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not know how long it would have actually taken because at that point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed even more of my time. McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore. I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't give a shit either.

lumost 11mo ago
I do wonder if the US is soon to experience a regression in productivity due to compensation practices. If all accessible jobs have declining pay, when do you start to reduce effort to match?
- Tanoc 11mo ago
  That's already happening. Roadsides aren't being cleaned up because the local DOTs aren't being paid enough. That leaves fallen rocks, mud buildup from floods, tree branches, and overgrown bushes very close to the roadway. Grocery stores have empty shelves because they don't get enough stockers. If you go to the meats aisle it's a good chance you'll either find some pork that's started to turn yellow or some beef that's started to turn brown because nobody wants to dig through the freezer. They get told the meat's old, they find the visible one, and the put a price reduced sticker on it. Walk into a hospital and the grating at the entryway will be filled with mud, the baseboards along the walls in the hallways will be scuffed to hell, and the walls will have scrapes taken out of them because the maintenance staff aren't being paid enough to care. Go into a bank and you'll have one teller working both the drive through and the front desk, and they'll take their time getting to you because the drive-through counts towards their statistics since the interaction with the drop off point is tracked. They aren't paid enough to work back and forth in the down time when either is doing something the teller doesn't need to be involved in. Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-specialized and non-salaried jobs.

bromuro 11mo ago

Here in Spain i have had only good experiences and i love sometimes going to McDonald!

SapporoChris 11mo ago
Here in Japan I have only had good experiences, but I can't say I love going to McDonalds. The breakfast offerings are decent and it's extremely fast service. During peak times seats will be around 95 percent full but the restaurant remains very clean. I think the cleanliness in part is due to the patrons being responsible.
- linguae 11mo ago
  I’m an American living in the San Francisco Bay Area who travels to Japan twice per year. McDonald’s in Japan is better than McDonald’s in America. McDonald’s in Japan not only is cleaner and has better customer service, but is cheaper. McDonald’s in America wasn’t always expensive; I was in high school and college in the 2000s when the dollar menu had double cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and small orders of fries. The regular menu didn’t break the bank, either. Prices started shooting upward in the 2010s; first the Double Cheeseburger on the dollar menu got replaced with the McDouble (one slice of cheese instead of two), then it exited the dollar menu and became 2 for $3, then 2 for $4. But after COVID, prices exploded. I remember the first time seeing a fast food combo meal selling for more than $10 sometime about five years ago, but it was the most expensive meal on the menu. Nowadays in my area $10-$12 combo meals are the norm. It’s sad and maddening; my salary hasn’t risen at this level! Meanwhile in Japan, I could get a Big Mac meal for around ¥800. Even when the yen was strong, $8 beats $11. At today’s yen valuation ($5.09), it’s more than half the cost, and with better customer service at that! I make six figures but I feel like fast food prices in California are a ripoff ($10+ for a crappy meal? No thanks!), and so I quit eating out except when traveling or for entertainment, such as hanging out with friends.
bombcar 11mo ago
Spain has McBeer, right? Like Portugal? Different world!

globular-toast 11mo ago

I'd rather just skip a meal than resort to McDonald's, but I've noticed in so many places there are more deliveries going out than people eating in. This seems to go for any place that does delivery. It's even hard to read reviews for places as so many of them are rating the delivery when the food in question doesn't transport well.

mc32 11mo ago

Seeing pictures of Cardiff McD's afterhours with disheveled, boorish patrons and rubbish strewn about, no-one would want to patronize them: https://hollyhughesgraphics.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/maciej-dakowicz-cardiff-after-dark/ https://hollyhughesgraphics.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/maciej-...

Nexxxeh 11mo ago
There's at least two in the Cardiff City Centre, one on St Mary St and one on Queen St. Having used both at normal and at peak pisshead hours, they're both alright. Not great, not a disaster. Slightly understaffed, and occasionally short on English language skills, but there's not an issue if you want hot food (inc vegetarian and vegan) or drinks at a daft hour.

duxup 11mo ago

What is strange is McDonalds at one point was by far the most consistent fast food place in the US. Personally it wasn't my thing but it was always a step above all the other chains. That hasn't been the case in a long time, quality control and customer service has fallen to be just as bad as any other place.

Nexxxeh 11mo ago

I'm in the UK and have McDonalds semi-regularly. A few times a month at least. Get a receipt, fill out the online feedback form, get a code. Put the code in the app, get an offer for £2.99 sandwhich (McPlant, Big Mac, whatever the chicken thing is) and either fries or a salad. £2.99 for a McPlant and fries at 3am is a godsend.

hexbin010 11mo ago

Yup. McDonald's in the UK is a truly horrible experience that only "addicts" still put up with Staff barely even look at you, they're miserable, fries are only 50% full, orders always wrong, no please or thanks or sorry for keeping you waiting 20 mins in the bay for a hamburger etc. Stopped going ages ago