Bingo!
Tell him what he won, Johnny.
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This is true. And as long as costs (labor, insurance, etc) go up, they will increase the prices. In this particular case, Doordash is still losing money each quarter, so I assume it’ll continue.
Also, the laws of economics are similar to the law of gravity, you can’t really escape them very easily. When prices go up, demand goes down. When prices go up so much, and demand comes down enough, sometimes it isn’t worth running that business anymore … and it disappears.
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Maybe Doordash’s model is fatally flawed? DrBob didn’t say how many gyros he shelled out over $60 for. I scored two turkey gyros at Arby’s last week, for $7 on a coupon.
It was a few years ago, that I heard Disney management effectively say that they intend to keep increasing prices, completely independent of costs, until they see a drop in park attendance. Of course, little kids don’t understand money, so parents are in a vice, telling their spawn they can’t see mouse, or pay whatever DIS demands. Now, I am seeing suggestions of a drop in park attendance, Whether a response to the exorbitant prices, or the war on “woke”, or the wake of the plague, I don’t know.
Steve
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I do not use Doordash directly, but the services I use do use them for deliveries. I do NOT pay for “per order” delivery, I figured that one out years ago. The sellers set up whatever delivery they choose. If I like it, I use it. If it is too expensive, I don’t shop there for delivery.
I use Amazon Prime, Walmart+, and Instacart. A local chain of grocery stores offers their own delivery, but it STARTS at $8.99 + tip (I always figure the tip is $5-$6). So a $14-$15 delivery fee for every order from that chain. The first three each have an annual fee which is tolerable. Instacart is the only one that adds additional fees ($2-$4 total per order). Don’t like it, but they do cover more stores than other services–so I use them as appropriate. I always check prices of items between stores, so when I place an order, I feel reasonably confident I got the best overall deal.
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I use Amazon Prime and Walmart+. I DO NOT use Instacart because around here they have different (higher!) prices than in-store prices.
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I dunno about that, but I can point at a number of fast-food joints that obviously need at least 4 workers all the time (and more than that much of the time) but are struggling to get by with 2 workers most of the day and 3 during rush periods.
And I’m nowhere near Minnesota.
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Just ask @steve203 about that! He knows firsthand what’s happening. Sometimes he comes to one of his places in his lunch rotation and they didn’t even open the doors because they don’t have enough staff to do so. And if they pay $25/hr instead of $17/hr to ensure that they get enough staff, then the price for lunch (with the geezer coupon) will be $11-12 instead of $7-8 … and then Steve won’t eat there anymore. So the owners are making an economic decision to rather sell less (not open the dining room for lunch sometimes) than to sell more but not earn enough to cover the overhead.
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If you can not afford to pay people get it yourself. Get off thy behind and work. Drive whatever. Make believe you earned something in life. It was not just forked over under some white-collar job arrangement.
Stop bothering to tell people who can not survive on low pay being a decent human being as an employer is out of reach. You are an employer if tips are involved. You are an employer if you are Doordash.
Time to grow up and pay your way in this world.
Better yet if you can not afford labor stop calling yourself a businessman. Just go out of business with your sorry behind.
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Superb!
(the quick brown fox etc)
The final insult to users…get a job…if you can not afford to pay people. Learn to work instead of bothering people and wasting their time.
The last stop is the nursing home stop dreaming of cheap brown female labor. You are not any better than anyone else.
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That is up to the store(s). If the store does not give Instacart much (if any) discount, then Instacart marks up the items sold. It is done with some of the stores I check. Target is one store that does not give Instacart a discount. I understand it, so it does not bother me. For me, I am looking at the delivery. I do not own a car because it is stupidly expensive, parking is hard to find, and the overall hassle of dealing with car ownership is not worth it (to me, at least). There is supposed to be an Hourcar (or similar) across the street. I think it was for 4-6 cars, some being EVs. Prices for car use are very reasonable. There will be public chargers there as well. It is currently two years behind schedule, which is frustrating. However, the new apt building that is also supposed to be built on that lot has also not yet been started. That would make going to the store to shop far more convenient if I wanted to drive.
“Low-income customers making less than $45,000 per year have largely stopped ordering from McDonald’s, the fast-food giant’s chief executive Chris Kempczinski admitted Monday on an earnings call with Wall Street analysts.”
DB2
Makes sense. Who making 21.63 cents an hour can afford to do anything but work and sleep. I wouldn’t even get out of bed for that wage.
Andy
We already went over that drivel of a headline (the $18 Big Mac meal) up thread. Have you forgotten it already?
TL;DR - It’s an outlier of a location that has prices significantly higher than others not too far away.
–Peter
Not forgotten. However, with the Fool these days you can’t provide a link without the extra stuff such as their headline.
The point which I quoted is that MCD is seeing lower sales because of higher prices – no surprise. Down the road, lower sales lead to fewer jobs.
I wouldn’t either unless I were starving. Of course, the median individual income is $44K (in 2021) and a third of US households are under $45K, so McDonald’s is talking about a lot of people.
DB2
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I also dont use instacart because its a friggin ripoff.
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Maybe because the food is so poor? But management would be to blame for the poor quality, so it must be something else, right? Yeah, blame the workers for wanting to be paid more. For the halibut, I sampled Mickey D’s a few times last year. berf When they announced that new burger, which appears to be a Big Mac with four patties, instead of two, I muttered “great, four, cold, dry, black, patties, instead of two.”
BK burgers are usually at least warm. I don’t see anyone “grilling” their patties tho. I see the burger builders take the patties out of warming trays.
Wendy’s seems to have the best burgers right now, at least at the one that I go to, because they still man the counter, so I can use coupons. A Baconator is pretty darn good.
Steve
Not saying that it’s good (I prefer a Whopper) but somehow I doubt that the taste is worse for people making less than $45K which is where they are seeing the decline.
DB2
How does management know what the income level of it’s customers is? Do they data mine the credit card info of their customers?
My proposition was that it isn’t the price of Mickey D’s product that is hurting sales.
Remember, a year ago, when I was asking, on this board, why Mickey D’s was always so busy? It sure isn’t the food. Worst fast food, of the four represented locally. Worst customer service too. But they are always the busiest. I could go past the local Arbys, or BK, and the place looks nearly dead. Go to the Mickey D’s on the same street, at the same time, and they have two drive up lanes with cars lined up.
MCD also appears to be suffering from Welchism. Their equity is not on a steady, multi-year, downtrend, like BA’s, but it is negative, meandering between -$5B and --$6B, in spite of claiming about $2B of net profit per quarter.
My read is they have done what is typical Welchism, reduce quality, reduce customer service, and engage in financial manipulation, to fluff up their short term numbers, while they ride on their reputation. If their sales are being hurt, they blame those dastardly workers that want to be paid, or they will go elsewhere, not, ever, blame management policy.
Steve
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I have no idea, but I suspect they’ve found ways over the decades. Surveys? Focus groups? Reward programs? Government spying?
Understanding its target market is essential for the company to continue to grow and reach new markets. By examining the demographic characteristics, geographic locations, lifestyle choices, occupations, and objectives of their customers, McDonald’s can better craft their marketing strategies and ensure the satisfaction of their customers…
McDonald’s customers have an average household income of $50,000-60,000 per year. This income level is slightly below the national average, with the majority of customers coming from lower-middle-class backgrounds.
You didn’t say why you thought lower food quality would impact lower income consumers more than the more affluent.
DB2