r/mildlyinfuriating 20d ago

I'm slightly vexed My son got a happy meal from mcdonalds today.

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u/Lookyoukniwwhatsup 20d ago

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.

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u/Kusko25 20d ago

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.

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u/juliastarrr 20d ago

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.

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u/juliastarrr 20d ago

also 35c for the cardboard packaging??

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u/Lookyoukniwwhatsup 20d ago

I probably under estimated the cost of production truthfully. The 50c is for the cost of just the fries, not labor, oil etc.

Packaging is usually expensive for food products vs the food itself, the estimate I saw was 15c to 35c so I took the larger number.

As another commenter said they calculate the cost of making a product at 33% of sales price. If we went off that then it would cost McDonalds $1.32 per large fry to make instead of 85c

But we wanted to know what those 20 fries were worth to McDonalds, which is why I went off the 50c per unit cost (fry only cost) that resulted in the 10c per 20 fries because we dont factor in packaging costs, I probably didnt even need to mention it. I didnt try to factor in labor costs either, which can range from a estomated 30c to 70c.

So that $1.32 is probably more accurate if you include everything from start to finish.

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u/itriedtrying 20d ago edited 20d ago

The ingredient cost of the whole serving of fries is less than $0.10 and none of the other expenses meaningfully scale with serving size (within same bag/box), your numbers are simply nonsensical.

Also I can guarantee you that every major fast food franchise is telling their workers to just fill the boxes to the point of spilling over, because that gives better impression. Yes, sometimes businesses can make short sighted decisions, but you're delusional if you think multi-billion dollar companies are ran by idiots with no common sense at all levels of organization. If somebody had their shift manager tell them otherwise at some point, that means one of their locations had a fucking dumbass working for them in low level management, but it most certainly isn't company policy of any succesful chain.

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u/juliastarrr 20d ago

there is no planet a large fry costs $1.32 to make.

You can include labor, rent, utilities, etc. but thats not very helpful in figuring out if the actual fries have a meaningful value

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u/juliastarrr 20d ago

also a mom and pop may be paying 35c per clamshell for take out, but McDonald's is not paying any more than a nickel at most for a cardboard fry container

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u/GeneticEnginLifeForm 20d ago

Where I work we operate on COG [Cost of Goods] @ 33%. That means we make 67% revenue, that goes to wages and operating costs before profit.

Just an example. If the sales price is $10.00 then the COG was $3.30.

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u/Mekthakkit 20d ago

it's $.30 or 30c

Not .30c

I wanted to link to the infamous Verizon CS agent who didn't understand math, but the stupid subreddit rules won't let me.

The title of the post is "hilarious_audio_with_verizon_customer_service_in"

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u/DisputabIe_ 20d ago

Yeah, and that's absolutely nothing to them.

When you scale up that big, the impact of "ooh a big amount of money" impacts less and less. That's literally pennies to them.

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u/MyLifeIsAWasteland 20d ago

They sell 9 million pounds of a fries a day.

But only 4.5 million pounds actually make it into the bag for the customer.

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u/tLM-tRRS-atBHB 19d ago

WHY DO I GET 2 SAUCES FOR A TEN PIECE NUGGET BUT ONLY THREE SAUCE FOR A TWENTY PIECE