McDonald’s has been using artificial intelligence to dynamically price menu items in the US and some global markets, according to a report by Reuters. This involves finding the “optimal price” to match what a particular store’s patrons would be willing to pay.
This fluctuates according to location, and even stores in the same city can have different cost amounts for the same exact items, according to information reviewed by Reuters. This is basically surge pricing, like with ride-share platforms, but for hockey puck burgers that have been sitting under a hot lamp.
Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it’s pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like “your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price” based on “customer willingness to pay in your area.” Cost differences at nearby locations can be stark. Researchers found that a Bic Mac at a Fresno, California store cost $5.69, but the same burger cost $6.89 at another branch two miles down the road. That’s a 21 percent difference.
When I’m bored, I get price quotes from Lyft and Uber to the airport. I’ll click around and look at the different tiers of service. Then I choose not to actually request a fare, and close the app.
I fly enough to where both apps probably have me as a regular airport customer, but that I’m price sensitive enough where I just won’t use their service sometimes.
I do the same with Doordash and other food apps, where I just put together potential orders to get a sense of how much something would cost if I ordered it, and then just never order it, letting that cart expire. I’m hoping this poisons their data or adds something to the price sensitivity metrics.
I also look at airfares, hotel prices, etc., a lot. It’s not for the purpose of manipulating their algorithms, as I just like to get a sense for how prices move over time. But if there’s a side effect that these variable pricing algorithms take into account people who window shop and walk away, maybe I’m helping push prices down.
If they’re gonna create a panopticon, we should fuck with their data.
Yeah, my first thought was that such a system was likely gameable.
But then my second thought was that idgaf what any of the McDonald burgers cost. The price they’d need to set to get me to “buy” them wouldn’t be economically viable for the company because I have no clue how a “pay customers to take our burgers” scheme could work out favorably for them.
There should be quotes around “burgers” in this headline as well IMO.
The text is pretty good though:
[…] but for hockey puck burgers that have been sitting under a hot lamp.
The bargain with fast food was that it was shitty for you, but it was quick, cheap, and tasted good. Now it’s even WORSE for you, costs as much as an actual meal, and increasingly tastes like garbage. What exactly are people trading off now?
A burger-fries-drink is the same cost as the most amazing local shawarma and drink or the freshest ban-mi from the local Vietnamese resto.
It isn’t quick anymore either.
there was ONE McDonald’s that I used to still go to on road trips.
then the US threatened to take over my country, so ofc I stopped going to McDonald’s. I tried to make an exception for it last year because I had to pee and I figured it would be the one place actually open at 1am for me to pee and get a coffee, but nope, closed. guess they want people to piss in the drive thru
McDonald’s doesn’t even offer washrooms anymore, they have literally nothing to offer me
There’s no point going to McDonald’s anyway because there’s always a bunch of ubereats and door dashes in the way, so you can’t get in.
I keep being amazed when we go out once a month for a sit down dinner and it’s only $5 more a head than fast food.
For the price of one decently sized McDonald’s meal here in Australia (about $16) I can comfortably feed myself for a week of healthy, filling dinners, and maybe lunches too, using staple foods and in-season veg.
More reasons to not eat McDonalds. It sure seems like they are trying to shift from being a hamburger chain into full real estate company and are trying to sabotage their weaker franchises so they can cash out the properities PE style.
Every franchise is, and has been, a real estate company first.
No, corporate owns most of the stores property then leases that to franchise owners. If one wanted to liquidate some of the property they owned and downsize operations they’d have to kick out the franchise owners first.
McDonald’s corporate is the franchise owner/franchisor. The franchisees lease and operate the stores.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they had some super addictive drug in there
Fat, sugar and salt can totally be addictive.
even stores in the same city can have different cost amounts for the same exact items
That has been a thing for years.
A local guy did the legwork pre-covid to price check a list of items at every McD’s in the city and found that there was a significant difference in price across the city.
The patterns he found were that franchisees were generally consistent across their own locations, and that the locations in the more affluent parts of the city tended to be more expensive.
The only real surprise was that corporate didn’t mandate exact prices across an entire market area.
How about McFuck Yourself
Then they came for the accountants.
To be clear the dynamic pricing isn’t the problem in this story, they did that before AI. It becomes a problem when they use surveillance to change prices per person rather than per store.
Don’t worry they will soon be instituting klarma so you can amortize your Big Mac into a 6 month payment plan.
Isn’t this going to hurt them more than it helps them? The whole point of places like McDonald’s is I know that no matter what location I go to I will get the same food at the same price.
If I don’t know in advance how much a meal is going to cost I might as well just go to a local business since the quality will be better.
For people who eat from McDs, this must be annoying.
On the plus side, surveillance pricing legislation has already been introduced in (IIRC) four states just this year, and if I had to guess, we could eventually see state-level bans in at least half of the states.
This, like the electronic tags at Walmart, or Uber charging more when your phone battery is low, or Target mining your loyalty club data to surge price you, is something that they’re speedrunning to try and normalize before the law catches up.
The issue is that these are black boxes. No one but the authors of the system know what’s happening. Law prevents Uber from increasing the price on a nearly flat mobile-computer? They didn’t. That’s just the normal price. Who has all the data? Only Uber. No one else. How then can you enforce such laws?
This is the one aspect of “Tech” that is turning me from an enthusiast into an honest Luddite. Our systems of regulation are so weak and ineffective at catching up to these sorts of exploitative practices and by design that I don’t see much being done to help people get ahead of this
Regular audits have to be a necessary part of any such law.
Only allow flatrate pricing per distance and time?
No government is going to enforce a universal flat-rate. However that doesn’t prevent what I’m talking about. Uber can give everyone a different flat-rate. How would you know? You wouldn’t. That’s the problem. A friend gets charged a different flat-rate? Ok, now you know, but when the government goes to investigate Uber says, “well the flat-rate had to increase. It’s now XXX.” Again, the imbalance is enormous between the businesses that have the data and any external regulatory body that has to do footwork to get any data.
The same item sells for two different prices at separate stores? “Oh, that store just had a sale.”
How would you know? You wouldn’t.
That’s not necessarily true. It’s ridiculously easy to find, especially in this example. Simply change your pickup address to the house next door.
People are much more perceptive about this activity than you give them credit for, and in fact, there’s a whole sub-genre of content creator that focuses on it. There are also leakers. That documentation will find its way to local authorities and become actionable when the amount of it passes a certain threshold, not unlike the number of dead kids translating to FB having to go to court.
That’s not necessarily true. It’s ridiculously easy to find, especially in this example. Simply change your pickup address to the house next door.
Do you think that fools Uber into believing that the user using the same mobile-computer, the same account, the same data-connection and within the same travel patterns is now a completely different person?
It’s immaterial. Surveillance pricing algorithms aren’t without their flaws, and in this case, it’s relying too heavily on established patterns.
Except you know, all the cities that already do for taxis, which is what Uber is, regardless of how it tries to skirt around it. Get a taxi, the rate is literally posted on the side of the vehicle. Yes, taxis certainly have their own issues, but it’s a sure whole lot more honest than Uber pricing, and that’s the bottom of the barrel.
Yep. I’ve been saying for years that if ubers were regulated like taxis, they would cost the same amount as taxis, and the company would have no reason to exist. It’s not about using new tech to provide new services, it’s about using new tech to skirt regulation—and also the regulations existed for great reasons, and we get to rediscover why.
How then can you enforce such laws?
The same way everything is enforced in billionaire-owned America: fines that, at the end of the day, are likely a minute fraction of a corporation’s profits, though some states will be heavier-handed than others. The Federal Government does not lead on any issue that is of crucial importance to the consumer anymore, so the states are where the power of regulation lies. It’s not ideal but something is better than nothing in this case.
Ultimately, how you fare in this ecosystem depends on your own digital hygiene. The best thing you can do for yourself is simply not consume these products in the first place, but that’s not really an option for many who may live in food deserts or have no options for shopping but Walmart or Target, which is why some measure of regulation is inevitable in most of the states, I think.
My recommendation is to avoid pieces of software that mine your data, like Windows, apps, and certain Internet browsers, use a VPN on any device you use to access the Internet, and 100% avoid loyalty clubs. Old-school methods are best, like making a reservation over the phone for example.
Tech hygene is necessary in the short term as damage mitigation, but this situation cannot be normalized.
Agreed.
The law is working slowly but deliberately. These bills, while new for now, will spread for sure.
Using slop to rate yor slop. Great.
Normally my knee jerk reaction would be against this. But if it helps to drive McDonalds to lose customers in the long run, well…🤔
I don’t know who is going there any more. I know there are people, I have one a few blocks away and the drive through is always full but you can go to local places and get good food for so much cheaper.
Kids who want happy meals drag their parents there. However once they hit 5th grade the allure of the happy meal fades and they usually don’t come back.
Oh no a socialist ‘planned’ economy via computers. Argentina don’t you dare! … I’m sure glad we have capitalist ‘planned’ economies now. Their plan is to fuck you till you die. More surveillance please! Surveillance-capitalism demands it!
It is a lot too, like the reuters guy was charged like 6 and 8 dollars for one of these garbage sandwhiches. I would get real food for that money.
I am using my brain to avoid going there if I can.
There are better places for less.You can make just about everything at home and it’ll be better quality. The only thing thats really hard to replicate are the fries, which are one of the best things at McDonalds when they’re fresh. Even if you have a deep fryer at home (unlikely) they go through multiple processes that give them their unique taste and texture.
But burgers are easy to make, the trick is roll a 2 oz patty of ground chuck as thinly as you can. 2mm thick is ideal cause it’ll thicken up and shrink in diameter a little as it cooks. Salt and pepper are the only seasonings used.
Dehydrated chopped onions are easy to find and they can be made in seconds at home by rehydrating them. Bam. You got a double cheeseburger. A Big Mac uses their special sauce and some rotten shredded lettuce. The sauce recipes are all online and I even think companies make clone sauces now you can buy at the store. I know Arby’s sells their sauces at the store now.
I haven’t tried it but I’ve been told Walmart sells the same frozen hashbrowns McDonalds uses. Way cheaper than way and you just toast them quick right out of the freezer.
Fuck McDonalds. They’ve become something to actively avoid and if you like something there do some research cause someone online has figured out how to make it at home.
