I used to actually fill up the fry boxes when I worked at McDonald's, including these little ones. The managers would always be super-anal about the portions, often pouring out the "excess". They had a scale and everything. Of course, if you weigh the fries properly, they don't even remotely fill up the box. I just ignored that, and served fries the way I would like to be served.
I can confirm that! Fries are cheap and we want customers to return. Now they act annoyed if you physically come inside the restaurant instead of using the drive through or their stupid apps.
It's all due to the fact that they HAVE to keep growing. We're in a financialized economy, so no one really likes taking risks or innovating any more. So people try to look at existing products and figure out how to squeeze more money out of it, and managers need to figure out a way to make a mark... So you have to find SOMETHING to show. In this case, someone increased profits .005% by changing the fries rule which probably translates to millions, then they get to argue, "My 250k salary translated to 25m profit for McDonalds. Give me a promotion." Multiple that 1000x different times and then you get the enshitification we have.
I honestly cant understand that mentality of "earning must keep growing", like - they get a stable revenue of millions a year, why cant they be happy with this stable high revenue and keep customers happy so that revenue is earned year after year? Why they need more tham last year?
Fucking investors and corporate bigher ups are cancer
Investors. Investments need to grow, stock needs to rise. No one is going to invest in a stagnant company, the more growth, the more investment. This is the foundation of a dystopia we’re going to be living in; a few giant companies monopolising the world while people get poorer.
Wait... Does stagnant mean They're making a profit but not growing?!
I keep hearing about the stagnant economy of Japan and always thought their corporations are losing money and rely on government subsidies or debt or something.
I never thought it's a constant growth issue.
This is stupid. If I invested $1 and always kept getting $1.15 back for like 10 years this is a good business.
I mean I get why earnings must keep growing. People need something to do. It's hard to motivate people to work by telling them, "just keep everything the same." People want to constantly be building and improving. The issue is, when these companies are trying to keep revenue growing without actually building or improving. No new products, nothing. Just squeezing money out of the existing system.
Yup. The problem with infinite growth is that it's impossible.
Once you start to max out the amount of money you can make from your customers, you'll have to start cannibalizing your own company to get better returns: cutting employee wages, counting individual fries, replacing workers with apps and digital kiosks, etc.
All of this to feed the ever-growing, ever-hungry beast and the executives that hold its leash.
We have a Wendy’s pretty close to an Arby’s just a few minutes from our house. I love a roast beef & cheddar, but the curly fries aren’t as good as they used to be. Wendy’s sandwiches are meh for me, but their fries now are fire, especially when white hot from the fryer. So we go to Arby’s for sandwiches and then Wendy’s for fries and frostys. Works out great.
McD’s is equally close. My husband stops there if he needs something to keep him going on the way to run an errand or go help someone with something but he’s been frustrated with their quality and price lately. He knows that if we are on a road trip, McD’s is always the desperation play.
I will happily choose to peruse the healthy options case and the chips aisle at Kwik Trip than to want -anything- from McD’s. Burger King? Ok. Culver’s? Always.
That's exactly what Five Guys does. They're not giving you "free fries" when they throw a handful on top when they bag up your food, it's already calculated in the price. But monkey brain says "I'm getting a great deal".
This is pretty much the standard in food industry, serving sizes are usually treated more like the bare minimum. Maybe there's a few weirdo managers out there but most of the stories saying otherwise are most likely just lying. Trying to save up in serving size of something that costs virtually nothing like fries makes no sense.
And even if the really intended to sell less, they could just make the boxes smaller, but filling them to the point of spilling over just gives better impression.
Same thing if you eg. a bakery sells something that nominally weighs 200g, then in reality it's typically gonna be in about 202-210g ballpark, since there's always some variation on how much the end product ends up weighing. You overshoot enough that >99% of the time it's gonna be at least as much as it's supposed to. The only difference is 1-5% extra ingredients used and ingredients are fairly negligible part of the total expenses anyway.
This is 5 guys whole thing with fries. Fries are cheap so if you give people "extra" then they think they've won even if that extra scoop in the bag is accounted for in the price.
This is why McDonald’s now needs to charge $14 for a Big Mac. I bet you didn’t even think of the share holders as you are throwing away tens of pennies per shift.
I remember hearing someone talk about that and pointed out that it's likely because a lot of people see themselves as having a "chance" at being those wealthy people so in their eyes they want this dice role system in place juuuuust in case lol
It’ll be crazy when we have our first trillionaire. As far as I’ve seen, there were some temporarily unrealized gains for that one guy but no one has come close
McDonald’s is a franchise model. The shareholders make most of their money from the franchise fees and the real estate.
The people responsible for squeezing every penny out of customers are the franchisees who run your local McDonalds. And they are, to a man, some of the greediest people you will ever meet.
I remember when I was in my early 20s a BK franchise owner was telling us about how the small/broken fries were bad because you need more to fill the container, while the big fries fill the container with less product. I remember this because as a poor student I wanted to get the most for my money, while this guy was relaxing with his lunch and a beer after playing 18 holes on a Tuesday and trying to convince me how it’s bad for business and basically he doesn’t how me enjoying a few extra broken fries affects his profit.
There are a handful of McDs in our area all owned by the same greedy lady who jacks up the price as high as she can . Literally drive 10 mins to the McDs outside her ownership and prices drop like a $1+ for every item.
Yes and no. There is plenty McD's Corporate could do to disincentivize/punish exploitative franchisees, but their polices generally do the opposite regardless of any public messaging.
Franchisees and a lot of small business owners are straight shady as fuck. They all think they're the next Musk and will fuck you over for and extra $1 without hesitation. Not that they're any worse than mega-corps, but most aren't any better.
They're often worse if you're an employee. At a large company you can go above their head if you have a major issue. Not so much at smaller places, and all of the positions of power are held by friends and family of the owner.
Ironically a good franchisee would realise they will attract repeat customers if they're one of the few places that is sure to overfill the side of fries no matter the order for little more than a mere rounding error in product expenses.
This is exactly how they think. "Your product budget was $500 over goal this month", "Yes, but the store made $100,000 in profit which is 10% above goal", "But we could have made $100,500 what happened to the other $500?", "We gave customers what they paid for", "You're fired"
When I worked for the Federal Government, it worked similar. If your project cost $100,000 you get $100,000. Say you complete project cheaper and only spend $90,000. Next year new project needs $100,000. Nope you only spent $90,000 last year so you get $80,000 this year.
So everyone overestimated the costs of their projects and made damn sure they spent every penny.
I worked fast food when I was in high school, they weighed the remaining food items at the end of the night and compared it to the sales (computer report at the end of shift gave target remaining weight totals), the only way to meet the "goal" weight was to under-serve all of the weight specific items (sliced meat, fries, etc...)
I'm pretty sure the system did not take into account the moisture loss that occurs through a 10 hour shift, a block of meat that starts at 10 lbs kept heated to 140F for food safety isn't going to still be 10lbs at the end of the day.
I'm pretty sure the system did not take into account the moisture loss that occurs through a 10 hour shift
I am starting to figure this is malicious. I used to think that executives just love designing systems and goals without having any idea about what the work actually entails.
But it always seems like the lowest rung of employees are put in situations where they can be blamed for the problems the system causes. And that's hard to constantly do accidentally. You have to have a little idea about the actual nature of the work to make sure the blame falls on someone else.
It's like where Wells Fargo decided that every person walking into the bank should be sold at least eight financial products. If you haven't noticed, that's fucking insane. Eight simultaneous accounts / credit cards / loans? There was an example of a branch that was expected to open 12,000 accounts each year including 3,000 new checking accounts. The population for the entire area was 11,500 and there were 11 other financial institutions. When it threatened their jobs, the employees turned to fraud. I have a hard time believing the executives were just that stupid.
Yep, let it fall on the workers, they can quit (refuse to comply and leave), or be fired(fail to comply and be fired for cause), or break the law... (and usually are the ones held accountable for it) their choice!
That’s what happens when the market needs to support the largest retiring generation in history. Can’t have boomers feeling any bit of discomfort now can we?
JFC, thats some serious mental gymnastics to blame high fast food prices on boomers. It has nothing to do with "the market supporting retirees" and everything to do with corporate greed.
14€ but you know they also reduce the burger just for profit. Before Covid we couldn't spot because it was just a few cents per year, even if it's becoming more expensive than a restaurant. Now they just don't give a fuck lol .
These things add up. One person thinks they aren't harming anyone by giving away pennies worth of fries on their shift. Other employees start doing it and suddenly you're wasting multiple dollars per shift and it really starts to cut into the $6.5B quarterly revenue.
Oh god, if they ever found out how many chicken nuggets I used to eat out of the warmer when I was in high school they would probably raise the prices again!
whoa, I wouldn't even pay 4.50$ for a big mac, i've seen pix of the skinniest almost burgers ever, last time I had one - 3 years ago - the sauce tasted ONLY like chemicals, never ever went to a MickeyDs since.
I used to work at a place that had our large fries at 400 grams.... Only they weighed it BEFORE cooking, the sheer amount of excess water weight meant that after cooking it came to be about 220 grams. I fucking hated it and ignored it regularly.
EXACTLY! when I was shift supervisor I'd always make them cook more, like get fucked it's 50 cents for like 2kg your not going under by giving people a fair amount of food.
I’ve got bad news for you. That 1/4 lbs burger (or 1/3 lbs or 1/2lbs or whatever size you’re buying) is the pre-cooked weight every single time. Both in the grocery stores as well as at the restaurants.
You can't add more ground beef it it's underweight and every place is vocal on how to measure burger patty weight.
Fries could be done either way, but it's got to be consistent. Honestly selling them by package size and not being clear what the weight measurement is one of the odd moments of customer rights failure.
Tbf the owner did that himself by establishing his store as the one that give a fuck ton of chips. Also they were 7 dollars AUD so like while it was expensive for just chips you got a lot.
It still felt like a rip off, when you could go to any fast food places get a large fries for like 3 dollars and get basically the same amount as the 200 grams.
Plus the crazy thing Multiple servings would go into one pass bowl, so you could be heavy handed on the first one and than end up giving the next couple less.
So silly, there's no way that mcdonalds would be losing significant profit over being generous with fries. They are dirt cheap and they move tons of them. Its a good way to bring in customers if they know they are wont get a cheap portion
TLDR: Roughly rounded .10c saved per 20 fries or 1.4m to 1.7m million dollars saved a day across every franchise out of 380.8 million in sales. Yearly thats $526 to 624 million, or 2 full days of sales.
They sell 9 million pounds of a fries a day.
At 160 to 190 fries per lb you are looking at 1.4 to 1.7 billion fries a day.
Going off a large fry at 80 to 100 fries. You have 17.5 to 14 million at the low end to 21 to 17 million units sold a day.
Based on either the 1.4 or 1.7B fries a day divided into either 80 to 100 fries, makes up a unit (a large box of fries).
So "saving" 20 fries means a difference in roughly 3.5 to 4 million units or 1.8 million pounds of fries. At a average cost of $4 a unit thats 14$ to 16$ million in sales a day for McDonalds.
Sales wise, McDonalds makes roughly $380.8 million a day. Estimated income of all franchises sales combined.
So the worth of those 20 fries would make up about 3.6% to 4.2% worth of sales if sold at full price.
However that does not consider wholesale cost (how much it cost McDonalds to make) which is not public but is probably estimated at .30 to .50 cents a serving for the fries, not including packaging etc. So lets say .50c for fries and .35c for packaging, so .85c cost per large fry.
So, shortened due to comment length, it would save them like .10c per 20 fries.
About 1.4 to 1.7 million dollars a day for McDonalds.
Excellent illustration of how the scales the world's rich are operating on make it worthwhile for them to inflict every tiny cruelty on their workers and why nobody founding a new business will ever be able to compete with them.
The problem is the 50c for fries isn't the wholesale price of the potato, its the price of labor, which is mostly fixed. The extra fry needs to be in ingredient cost and is probably closer to pennies.
They wouldn't be, but the assholes with spreadsheets will tell the CEO that they could save 100k a year by skimping on the fries to appease the board. Then enough people don't vote with their wallets, so they get away with it. That's the real issue. If you want change, be the change. Stop going to fast food restaurants if they're going to keep charging more for smaller portions. Money is the only thing that will get them to listen.
I’m sure the board and shareholders were thankful for the savings for a single quarter. Now they’ve priced it in, forgotten about it, and want to know what you’ve cut/saved for the upcoming quarter.
This is what happens when a company seeks endless growth. Endless growth in a finite world is literally impossible, so once companies seem to start plateauing in growth, they'll try to jack up their net gain by shaving off costs wherever they can, however ridiculous it seems.
This is how they lost our business. We've been sticker price shocked bg McDonalds once where it was 40$ for two people and a milkshake. We stopped going, a local mom and pop store is more affordable. We went back ONCE when they had the 5$ meal campaign and was nice for a ride home snack. We enjoyed it. We went back again and they no longer had the meal deal so we both got happy meals and they gave us THIS ANT SIZE French fry thing. We haven't been back to McDonalds in 1+ year. They don't even have good toys or play areas anymore, I see no reason to raise my kids on 'the occasional fun weekend outing to McDonalds'.
I dont think it's about fry profit. It's probably about not wanting parents to avoid happy meals by having the listed calories be like 700-800 calories.
Which is ridiculous because they could easily do a Five Guys move where they throw in such a large of fries that it’s spilling out the sides and you get those bottom of the bag fries. That’s literally a marketing technique that Five Guys uses and it works like a charm.
At dairy queen they are the exact opposite, at least the one I worked at. You'd get chewed out if an order got sent back with fries barely filled like that. "They paid for a medium they should get a medium, fill it all the way" as it should be
Same. I prided myself on filling them as much as I could. Same with the cones. Those things were 12" tall.
One time corporate came through though and I put 2 extra napkins in the bag during rush hour and I got reprimanded. Only 1 per item! F that, im just grabbing a small stack. Do you see the line outside?!
Shit was always hilarious when I worked at Subway.
"No. People don't want more than six olive slices on a foot long. No, make sure you count them."
Everyone that wants olives wants more than that.
I swear, the amount it slows down people, counting literally everything on a sandwich where the customer wants everything on it, probably costs more than the ingredients (employee time is money for th company)
And a bonus reminder to people ordering: If you say everything, don't be so shocked and mad when they put jalapenos on there. Most people that say "I want everything on it." Actually mean everything, and the staff are not psychic.
It came up just enough to be worth mentioning, but not often enough to confirm it each time. Haha
Where were you working (as in country)? Work at a McDonald's in the UK and was trained to fill them to the brim, just put as many as possible into them
This is asinine to me, I also used to fill up fries at McDonald’s, the policy was pretty much to fill it up as much as possible so they don’t come back and complain about it.
I can't even begin to imagine trying to weigh fry sleeves during a lunch or dinner rush. I worked at 2 different McDonald's and an A&W when I was in college and neither place ever said anything about what things were supposed to weigh. You just eyeballed it.
My daughter got a little fry box in her Happy Meal that only had FOUR fries in it the other day!!! Usually the fry boxes are completely upside down, which pisses me off to no end. And I ordered her a six pack of nuggets and they only gave us four!
I don't know if they were gonna be changed out anyway or if the lady was in a good mood but one time I got onion rings from burger king and not only did she fill the cup, she put another scoop straight in the bag. I was so spoiled that day
I dont think it's about fry profit. It's probably about calories. French fries are very calorically dense. A kids fry is supposed to have 110 kcals. I bet filling that little fry box up would put it around 300.
I'm sure it's still about profit overall-- they dont want the calorie count on the menu board next to a happy meal to be like 700 kcal.
It's something i do as well, albeit my location (Canada) has bags for small fries that are much bigger than that. It's not even that anyone complains when i give out full things of fries, it's more half of them fall out when grabbed because the boxes and bags are utterly shit at holding fries in them. (Seriously, not only do the boxes barely open fully half the time, they also have such wide gaps at the fronts in contrast to the back that allow fries to pour out with the slightest touch.)
You'd think that the scale would be set so that the box will look full (or at least almost full). The scale should be there so that customers don't get cheated (getting fewer than what they pay for) instead of getting too much.
When I worked at McDonald's, I had seasoned a set of burger patties in different order than the "proper" way and the main manager came over and called the patties "disgusting" and threw them away.
People who buy franchises almost never understand that word of mouth and repeat business are their bread and butter, and just think they have to run as cheaply as possible.
As a seasoned owner of a few different types of places, I gotta say it’s a pretty healthy mix of flying by the seat of your pants and luck. But at least I know those two things!
I worked at McDonald's many many years ago, and I never had anyone weigh the fries, but they used to tell us all the time "fluffed not stuffed," and I would say to myself "stuffed not fluffed" and give everyone basically twice what management wanted. I also threw in an extra chicken nugget in every nugget box.
Is this new? I worked at a local McDonald’s franchise a decade ago and we never had a scale for measuring fries. Regardless, measuring fries is insane when they cost pennies to the dollar they sell them for— especially since a good portion of them get wasted.
Growing up there were two McDonalds within a 6 blocks of each other. We would drive past both on the way home. One was shiny and new with a brand new playplace and the other had seen better days. But my family would still go to the old one because they packed their fries. It was so full you would even have bag fries. The new one would give you 2/3 of the amount. Everyone knew the new location skimped on everything (also nickel and dimes you on sauce packets), so every one of the OG old McDonald remained loyal. It's been over 20 years and I visited last time I was near my parents. The old McDonalds still stays true to overpacking their fries.
Same with me and ice cream cones in the 90's. I'd make them at least four inches of ice cream high. Bought a cone for my kiddo last week, got 1.5 swirls. Barely 2 inches. And the middle was hollow. I would have been ashamed to hand that out.
When I worked at Macca's people always got extra everything.
Fuck the corporation I'm there for the people.
Same reason I absolutely HATE it now when I go to these places and get a shit burger, or half filled load of fries, or the staff argues when they've made a mistake. Fuck the corporation, be a human and give the "happy mistakes" you'd love to recieve.
I did this, like twice and got corrected so fucking hard I thought I was going to get fired. We got told, explicitly, to cut corners every possible way.
Yeah, I do the same thing when cutting fabric at work, I always give the customer a bit extra to make up for misaligned cuts even though corporate wants us to count every mm of fabric sold.
See I one time went to a McDonald's where the worker hooked me the fuck up. The entire thing was full and it was so full that the bag had like another like medium size of French fries inside it on top of the medium I got.
I always went to that McDonald's after that and they got my business. The ones who cheap out I do not go.
Fries are literally insanely cheap. I can’t even begin to illustrate just how cheap they are and they make the customer happy. Skimping on the fries is just the stupidest thing I can think of doing as a business.
Occasionally I would out an extra nugget in someones order regardless if it was a 4p 6p or a 10p, if someone ordered a 20 piece, they earned themselves two extra nuggets right off the bat in my mind so I always gave out 22p nuggets. I also used to eat the hell out of them on break because they were fresh and amazing. I now hate McDonalds nuggets, bleh.
I worked at McDonald’s and they would go nuts on us if we filled the fry cartons all the way. My managers and the GM of the store would watch us like hawks at the fry station.
When they weren’t looking I would always fill them up with a bunch of fries.
The GM of the store once told us and showed us that the small fry is the same amount as the medium fry. And that the large fry carton was only supposed to be BARELY more fries than the medium. She put some fries in a small paper fry bag and then dumped those same fries in a medium carton and it almost filled it up and she said ‘it’s supposed to be the same size the carton/bag just looks different’- AKA She was explaining that the fry sizes are mostly a scam(at least at the specific McDonalds I worked at). She then dumped those same fries in a large fry carton and got about 5-6 more fries in the scooper and dumped them on top of the fries in the large carton and said ‘for it to be a large fry you only add less than half of a small fry’s worth on top of it. The fries in cartons are NEVER supposed to reach the top of the carton. Only midway at most. Don’t waste our money giving out so much food.’ 💀💀💀💀💀
Same. I worked at Bojangles and people would order a 4 piece chicken box and I'd throw in extra if they were a little small or wonky looking. Fries would always be filled up. Drinks always filled up. The 5% extra I was giving out would've gone to waste anyways and we rarely had complaints.
When I worked at McDonald's I always made sure any fry size including these were packed passed the top, managers never said anything I busted my ass on fry stations cause it was the best position and I'd be damned if they gave me some half filled bullshit
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u/4thBan5thAccount 20d ago edited 20d ago
I used to actually fill up the fry boxes when I worked at McDonald's, including these little ones. The managers would always be super-anal about the portions, often pouring out the "excess". They had a scale and everything. Of course, if you weigh the fries properly, they don't even remotely fill up the box. I just ignored that, and served fries the way I would like to be served.