My boi got a hovercraft.

It was specifically Tesla backing up noises

It warmed my little heart

❤

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/htWZd8p7lrfPlKs.html

wouldn’t regular be “wittle beby” and large be “big hulkin smash”? i am enjoying the naming scheme tho…. it brings to mind some of the deranged stuff you find in fancy restaurants. like. Oh you actually want me to say those words with my mouth to order

I think this could backfire, purely because Wittle Beby is fun to say

A local lounge bar where a live has a “Big Boy Cheese Board” and you 100% feel like a tool ordering it but you also feel powerful looking a server in the eye and saying “we’re going to have the Big Boy” 😂

Positive out of a negative i like it

honestly i think the size trap only works the first couple times you go there. once you get used to it, you realize how big the various sizes are and then you order however much you want to eat. the problem then becomes that our gluttonous society just wants the largest size possible.

Did he flip it for the whole future? He noticed *at the time* but now it's like, not weird or abnormal or excessive at all.

@@elishannon3855 Yeah he’s partially the reason. The other part is Bob’s Big Boy creating the double decker burger, which McDonalds -stole- used as inspiration for the Big Mac, and between the three of them they normalized doubles in America

@@z-beeblebrox Which is sort of sad because while everyone and their mother has a double burger of some kind on the menu, the vast majority of them are rinky dink patties. You end up with the same meat that would have been in a single had the double not existed, just with more bread or toppings depending on how the double works at that particular establishment.

@@ck7802 For sure. It's important to remember that shrinkflation ain't new, it's in fact a time honored tradition

This is a common sales tactic, and you can see evidenced in most tech offerings and online websites selling product now.

Same!

But think of how many ppl you can manipulate if you have a backpack full of free peanuts (and disposable gloves for safe handlin)

I literally can't even walk into Five Guys lol

70 because you can fit one more in there.

@@sommeone Biohazard suits exist :p

Hey, how're you doing lately? Feeling a bit price sensitive, if I'm honest.

I was looking for this comment

It smell like price sensitive in here

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Shades of the Starbucks CEO complaining about discrimination against "people of means" (billionaires like him)

Just because you think it was enough ice cream for you, doesnt mean that it was enough ice cream to satisfy a full grown man. Furthermore, even if it was, a man would not order it, not because of their ego, but because the name conveys the idea that it is intended for a child, and thus the amount of ice cream they receive will be less than they are seeking.

I absolutely have - and will - as a grown man, by stealing Michael Caine's accent for the order. It's a delicious stack of sweet steaming cakes. I refuse to be denied it for its name.

He's just a little guy in a non-physical sense.

@@silverandexactalso larger than life at the same time, just not in the sense of stereotypical toxic masculinity

Honestly I had no idea, I only see him on camera and hardly ever in comparison with other people 😁

@@ronaldmartin2666 I've met him and he gives off very tall vibes even though he's only an inch or so taller than me!

That was pre-COVID measurements. Now he’s 3’5

I love it when someone gives an additional reason to dislike something I already vehemently hated. Starbucks naming convention is one of those things.

Starbucks special lingo also adds a sort of "fancy" or "exotic" element to an order. You're using specialty language to order a specialty drink and even the simplest orders still have a degree of customization all of which makes it easier to mentally justify paying more. At a diner if I just tell the server "coffee" they'll bring me a coffee but at Starbucks they ask "what size," "light roast or dark roast" and "room for cream or sugar."

@@altejoh This is what we call 'confirmation bias'! It's not always a bad thing but it is a thing

my brain doesn't remember the fancy names lol. I just say "the big one" or "the little one" or "the middle one"

@@ethank5059 i mean pretty much all cafes will ask about the size, light/dark roast, room for cream, and all that stuff. Kind of comes with the territory when you specialize in coffee, unlike a place like a diner. I also have to ask milk preference as a barista because while most people are fine with the default 2% there's always going to be some people who forget to mention they want oat or almond etc for taste or because of lactose intolerance or whatever. I do agree with the fancy wording for cup sizes though.

I've done the same thing with the DQ and Dunkin apps before but they didn't even have a waiting period so I just did it right after the first order and get everything together mostly

You can also do multiple orders on the kiosk using your deals at the same time

And even with a smartphone phone, internet and memory space are additional expenses which are necessary to use this kind of app - which may be not much of an issue if it’s only one or two stores, but when you’ve got all your supermarkets having apps, all the other places you might get food, email and two factor authentication and banking and… it adds up, and it adds up to ongoing cost

Honestly this is just not the case. Smartphones and phone plans with even unlimited data are very cheap at this point. The space required for the app on the phone is incredibly minimal as well as the data required to use it. The only valid point is that not everyone wants to download the app, and that just comes down to that persons opinion.

@@justintime1237 For you, maybe they are "very cheap". But that's subjective, and you don't get to tell others for whom that isn't the case that they're wrong. They're just poor/live somewhere else where costs and access are different/not you. You may not have intended to come off as dismissive or insulting, but telling poor people they're wrong about being poor does not read well.

My thought when I heard the point is that MOST people would have access to a smartphone, even if it is a shitty cheap one. Maccas has free WiFi (as do supermarkets and shopping centres and other public places) so downloading the app and using it IS accessible in those stores. There will always be outliers, but I think it can be said that an adult purchasing takeaway food that cannot access a smartphone and subsequently an app is an outlier in our society now

@@Sherubiiii I don't know how applicable that is to the US (where I - and Hank - live) in broad terms, but in more rural locations - and we have a lot of them - free wifi anywhere is rare, and I've never heard of grocery stores (even big chain ones that would count as supermarkets) having it at all. It's not in the public places I have access to, unless I drive the better part of an hour to a more urban area, making it inaccessible in a practical sense - having to have a car (we don't have any public transportation in most rural areas, including mine) to drive to free wifi...doesn't count. It sounds like where you live makes it more accessible than where I do. My original point is just that: these things are less accessible than people seem to think they are. They're treated as if they're ubiquitous - available everywhere to everyone (in "rich" countries at least), and while they are increasingly common it's exhausting for people to always talk as if those 'outliers' don't matter or exist. Having your existence disregarded so casually...it gets old, you know?

I'm not old and I am tech savvy, and I still would not "download an app" or any of that other nonsense. I just wouldn't go to such a place.

​@@culwin I'm in the same boat - not old, I just refuse to use anything but a landline because I'm not keen on the idea of people being able to contact me anywhere at any time. But the assumption that everyone has a smartphone is getting so baked into society I might have to cave soon. I recently could not order at a restaurant because the only menu they had required me to scan a QR code to look at it. No paper menus, no internet menus, just that bloody QR. Obviously, I just left and went somewhere else, but this is getting more common. Where am I going to go if *every* place just requires a QR code?

⁠@@trianglemoebiusI do have a smart phone and I can scan a QR code. But have you tried to read that tiny print on your phone screen? I always request a physical menu.

@@trianglemoebius Agreed. I have been to places that wanted you to use the QR codes but also had paper menus available. I've heard of places that only had the QR codes but haven't been to one. If I had only QR codes to order from I would walk out. I have my land line and that's it. No need for a smart phone when work from home is a thing that exists now.

​@@culwin best of luck to ya man, i cant find a replacement lightbulb since the incandescent ban that doesnt require a damn internet connection and smartphone app. Every industry is following suit, hell we're not going to be able to refrigerate food without apps and connectivity features in just a few years.

Hooooonestly I'm not sure about that. Like maybe? Obviously giant corporations don't get to be giant corporations by not being greedy and stingy. But at the same time that data is so cheap I have a hard time imagining that a company as big as gargantuan as McDonalds cares about the few million enough to bother with it, especially in the face of the potential scandal/erosion of trust that would occur if it ever got out that they were selling user data. Basically if I were running a corporation as big and famous and profitable as McDs (which I'm not, so maybe ignore me) I would be more worried about the damage to the brand selling data would deal than the chump change we stand to make from the actual data sales.

I refuse to give any kiosk my info or download apps specifically for this reason. I'll use em, but you can't have my info, I just wanted noms, dudes.

@@goosenotmaverick1156instead you just give all your data to Microsoft, Apple and/or Samsung. What’s the difference? I’m against it all as well, but the companies already know everything about you anyway.

@@stevendufour oh I get what you're saying. But anything I can do to limit what I give out, I try to. It's an easy way. Plus I don't frequent too many establishments that use them, and it doesn't inconvenience me in any way, just selecting my order, paying, and waiting for my less than mediocre food. Lol What I'm basically trying to say is, it's important to try, and it's just as easy to not give them the info as it would be to give it to them. On the contrary I just hit one button instead of having to enter information at all.

It requires your location be on at all times while the app is in the background, spooky imo

Yeah I’m surprised he missed this point. Idk if I’d go as far to say it being 98% of the reason, the other reasons he listed are also very strong motivators for sure, but this is also a big factor

Good points, adding one more: 4. It allows them to collect and sell your personal data

I think the data industry issue is more of a 30 and under concern. A lot of people don't like it, but people who grew up with a phone in hand from middle, and high school, feel a deeper disgust .

And don't forget, it also allows them to collect and sell your personal data

Everything else is selling it anyway and I need to eat cheap so :/

Agree! As a "price-sensitive" person, I think using apps for ordering food actually saves me time, since I don't waste time standing in the restaurant, scanning the menu board and waiting in line at the register. Plus, no pricing surprises - if I add an "extra" and it immediately raises the total in my cart, I can decide if I actually want to add it or not before finishing my order. But, yes, your second paragraph is still true.

That why I deleted it. I realized I was being played after a while, and didn’t like my money being drained. You might think your getting free stuff, you’re not. You’re getting broke.

A Venus Fry Trap, if you will.

@@maggie6152 I will Not, thank you (/jk, jk)

If they were going to get food anyway some of those people only changed where they were going, not how much they were buying. It definitely works as you said though for many.

Yeah I was going to leave a comment like this as well. Price discrimination is weird because it somewhat requires you to become mentally dependent on a system and learn how to “best” use it. It hooks your brain because you start thinking about how much money you’re not saving when you don’t order. And if you’re that price sensitive you likely don’t have the bandwidth for more than a few systems. I’m not saying I know this, but I wouldn’t be shocked if McDonald’s makes more money on average from poorer people who are more dependent on it than from richer people who more often pay full price. There’s also the difficult to quantify value of risk avoidance. You can afford to take larger risks on volume allocation (and therefore potential profit maximums) if you know that you can guarantee your stock gets cleared out whenever you put product on sale (still slightly above profit thresholds too).

Yes my favorite place as a child was five guys! And the peanuts as the ‘free appetizer’ instead of it being like rolls or bread was great too

how do you have enough time to be a supervisor at two of the busiest fast food chains in canada? i'm assuming supervisor work is full-time

@@pricessLeopard112 I started at McD and was full time there first and then started at FG and only do McD on weekends now as they don’t require me to be full time

@@devlimbani oh cool! get that cash money homie

This.

I never thought about this and it’s horrifying. It makes me glad I don’t use McDonald’s, but this also applies to places like Target. Having a RedCard and taking advantage of the deals and paying through the app makes things “easier” - I’m more likely to buy the dog treats that are on sale if they’re actually a better deal than the ones I normally buy, but then I’ll get recommendations or ads for those treats or similar products. Technology is truly wild.

@@dr.spookybones3965 it IS kinda creepy! Especially because they *_could_* use that data to help people make better, more informed purchases... but in reality, they'll use it to manipulate people into less informed, less needed, costlier purchases :/

Yes, data mining.

If I had the app they would know that I go to McDonald’s once a month stare at the drive-through from the sidewalk and then continue my bike ride home 😂😂😂

The price isn’t that different for him at those individual locations. For me, five guys is literally 1.5 to 2 times as expensive for equivalent food LOL Hes trying to extrapolate it to everywhere

​@@AnewevisualI implore you to look at the price per calorie and not just the menu price like most of the goobers who complain about Five Guys prices. With the exception of couponing in the app I cannot imagine a market where the price per calorie is twice as high at Five Guys.

@@whitdodgeI don’t see much value in judging price per calorie. That would, for example, make broccoli seem ridiculously “expensive”. If anything I’d care more about price per “satiety value” or something, which is way harder to measure.

@@TheWheatless But we aren't comparing broccoli to hamburgers? We are comparing hamburgers to hamburgers. This argument is nonsensical. Price per calorie is used here because that is how we objectively measure the value of common goods. Any meal with a higher serving/calorie count would just immediately lose the value comparison by your troubled logic. Introducing factors like "satiety value" just puts Five Guys even further ahead.

@@whitdodge What puts five guys ahead on satiety?

I have never heard of anywhere in the world that sales work like that. The sale price is on the label of the shelf, it is not dependent on how frequently an individual customer buys an item. Only exception I can think of is limiting how many times the deal can be applied per order (think "limit: one per customer")but you can just leave and come right back in to get the sale again

​@@partylizard7012this scenario is more common with loyalty cards that track one person's spending and customize the coupons

​@partylizard7012 I think they're talking about places like Kroger where coupons will print when you use your rewards account. At least in Kroger's case, my coupons are related to things I buy often on my rewards account. I've never seen them go up sequentially like that, but they do end up related to something I purchased recently or something I've bought consistently for years.

@@partylizard7012 These kinds of coupons attached to a receipt are actually really common in the old, small stores (like Dollar General, Big Lots) and I can totally see someone programming a deal in there to check how many of an item was purchased, add one, and give $1 off as a sick joke. Not all sale prices are directly attached to the shelf.

Not quite the same, but a lot of places will put up a sign that says something like "Get two for $3!" but if you check the normal price in the fine print they are actually $1.50 each and not discounted at all.

Your description of Five Guys food prep reminds me a bit of Chipotle, which I consider more fast-casual than true fast food. When you go in, you can see employees in the back chopping lettuce, mixing guac, cooking the meats, etc and I like that you can see ingredients being prepped right there so you know you're getting fresh food.

its not very often a current five guys employee, former mcdonalds employee gets a video like this thrown at them. I honestly never got the app for mcdonalds but its very interesting to to compare them 2 now, but to be honest i would have likely said a lot of similar things to you @verh7 like free meals and the quality preaching of five guys. The mcdonalds i worked at had employee meals free up to $5 but any more than that and you have to pay for it, so i often got the cheaper items becuase of that, such as the mcdouble mentioned in the video, much to the aversion of my stomach. One thing five guys does that Mcdonalds never did is on days where i dont work till close/only work a few hours/get sent home early becuase reasons, and thus dont get a break like normal, is i still get my free five guys employee meal. When a case arose similarly at Mcdonalds and i got food, i had to pay for it still if i recall correctly.

What you're saying also reminds me of In-N-Out, except Five Guys is a *lot* more expensive.

Yea McDonald's may be equalling calories but calories are super cheap. Not to mention McDonald's is a massive publicly traded corporation. They're all to happy to cut costs since they have a captive audience. Five Guys seems like they started out realizing that McDonald's is expensive for cheap food. Honestly it's a good idea and they executed it well. McDonald's makes enough that Five Guys could make a quarter of McDonald's profit and be thrilled. Wonder if they'll end up racing too the bottom. Not sure if they're publicly traded.

@@lesliefranklin1870 that's fair! I worked at five guys on the east Coast where in-n-out isn't at all, so maybe five guys was able to capture the market there. Five guys also doesn't do drive thrus at most, if not all, locations which is an interesting note as well.

Exactly! I used to work at a pizza chain and we had all kinds of deals that could essentially cut your total in half, but you had to ask for the deal by name. Employees were not allowed to discuss anything other than the 3 coupons that were cherry picked each month, unless a customer specified "do you still have x coupon?", and very few ESL folks knew to do that

@@pastate lol that is extra shady

Dominos is wild with that. And it doesn't help that their website is absolute ass, so you end up either suffering through it or paying like twice as much.

I adopted online order as soon as it was available. I’m saving like $30 from the app. Hank’s argument of price discrimination isn’t a strong one. The idea of people valuing more time over cost doesn’t match up with how much of a hassle it is to call in an order vs just quickly placing a pre-saved order. I value my time AND money. Using my time to discover how convenient the app is has made me save both my time and money.

Even selling TWO large fries for $1 is still profitable. French fries are incredibly cheap to make

Yes. Even if 100 people get free fries that week. That's 100 people that didn't go to a competitor and that's worth more than any TV or billboard advertisement. The customer actually gets to sample the product. Also psychologically, people are more likely to eat fast food at a place they have been to before as they subconsciously feel more comfortable. Humans are pattern following creatures. It also creates dopamine for the customer as they have gotten "a good deal". Humans are more likely to favourably think about a shop where they have previously gotten their money's worth of service. It really is genius. I find it utterly fascinating. It really speaks to the phrase "you've got to spend money to make money". It shows how a company with a large capital behind them really can leverage that capital to become dominant in the industry. :)

on top of all that, french fries stimulate your appetite in a crazy and unnatural way, you will crave more food immediately after eating fries, this is very commonly observed thing in food science. These companies are genius!

Mc Donald’s is real estate company who sells burgers and fries, though.

this is super interesting to me, because at present i cannot think of any other way *to* phrase it. how would you put it?

They're ordering the Megatater

@@ladyofthewittyremark If I was trying to be most correct I would say a large portion of fries. If I was actually speaking casually I would probably just say large fries though, plural. Now granted, I wouldn't actually say fries at all because I'm British, they'd be chips, unless I need to convey the thickness (or rather thinness) to you specifically, then I might say it.

Very common way of phrase where I am at. Similar to how “getting a hair cut” doesn’t mean a single hair is getting cut.

@@lVlegabyte The difference is you're actually saying "get a haircut". Not to be pedantic, it's just important because the compound word entirely changes the grammatic makeup of the sentence. "I am getting a hair cut" = 'hair' a singular object, 'cut' is a verb. "I am getting a haircut" = 'Haircut' is the object.

I would actually be surprised if this WEREN'T the case.

This was literally what I was thinking about. What about the people that don't have phones? Surely, they are the ones that need access to the app most.

Yes, exactly this!

The card isn't some act of charity though. You're almost certainly trading getting some minor discount for having data collected about you and your purchases. Price discrimination only works when it's invisible. If people see that you paid X and I paid Y where X < Y that causes immediate problems.

My supermarket switched from the little card that you get penalized for not using to requiring the people use the phone app at checkout. There is a line between price discrimination and coercing people into the data economy that is being crossed there.

The rich care not for the plight of the poor an old working class.

A lot of these hidden costs don't get calculated in how much people are "saving". Sometimes it's because it's pretty hard to quantify directly (at least from outside).

There's a tiny saving grace where, if they do something really egregiously illegal, that agreement can be thrown out by a judge and a class action can proceed as normal.

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I assume that means for the app though, not like if there was something wrong or unsafe with the food

@@jess-mx No, it would apply for the food. It is really broad language so a good lawyer could argue against it potentially being over broad or not including particularly devastating circumstances, like others have said, but the language in the TOS would include it.

This is not the first, but yeah...weird...

@@hankschannel Yeah I was gonna say, given the fact that this is on your side channel, I was curious where the sponsorship money is going?

The video he made a few months back about how the regulating agencies changed how a unit of engagement is classified which upended a ton of existing contracts that had guaranteed sponsors a certain level of engagement now were able to get a lot more out of those existing contracts and creators were left with the short end of the stick trying to make up for all the units of engagement they now had to make up for. Hank mentioned you would probably see a lot more double ads like this popping up because of those contracts

Its so wild haha. You dont do sponsor reads on vlogbrothers, the scishow and crash course stuff doesnt do them because their educational, and shorts dont have time for them. So i think this is the first time in 15 years of watching Hank I’ve heard you plug something that isnt your own business lol. Like even that freakin mobile game you plugged you made an investment in lol

​@@hjewkes SciShow does them sometimes, but the ones I've seen are either for educational things, or more like underwriting where it's just a mention or a logo of a company.

It's a really interesting topic. I saw an article that compared actual price increases to the perception of price increases and argued that companies like McDonalds have gotten better at optimizing orders and getting people to buy add ons and upgrades so the amount a typical customer spends at McDonalds is much higher despite the price increases not being as much. People then get mad and blame the overall economy while many economists are left scratching their heads because the prices didn't go up by that much.

There's actually a Sci Show Tangents that covers advertisements that I just listened to! It's a bit weird as it's one of their first episodes so they're still figuring out the format but they talk a lot about ad psychology and trickery.

Every for profit company does this, from food to video games to children's shows. They all want to hack your brain for attention.

Oh yeah...that's, like, a huge thing.

Like pretty much the crux of what this country's biggest companies (and many more aspiring giant companies) is built on. As long as they're making profits, they're happy. And ever-increasing profits is a huge part of the goal and what makes Wall Street happy

True enough, but these tactics all scale to 1000 franchisees, and are copied by dozens of other brands, and so the effort expended to get _you specifically_ to spend more of your hard-earned cash doesn't really seem like a "disturbing amount" after all.

@@ps.2 True, but the fact that the 1000s of franchises/brands exist means that almost any individual can find at least one company's branding more enticing fall to the traps that make them spend more money on that brand

"Anything I order will be a deal because it saves me time." That's a motherfucker who is rolling in it. God damn Hank is baller

Absolutely! Another commonly accepted form of price discrimination is airlines increasing ticket prices as the flight approaches, effectively allowing tourists to buy fairly cheap flights while putting more of a burden on businesses that commonly make these last minute purchases. But I think there is an important caveat to be added to Hank's statement about price discrimination. In microeconomic theory, there is this notion of perfect price discrimination. It essentially means that you charge everyone the maximum they would be willing to pay for a product. Such an arrangement would be efficient (achieving the maximum potential output of the given economy), but it would wipe out all the benefits consumers gain from competition (precisely not having to pay the maximum price you'd be willing to pay, we call this phenomenon consumer surplus). With the growing amount of our data that vendors and producers can access, I fear that it allows them to gradually approach this state of perfect price discrimination, making increasingly well-tailored offers to all of us. This certainly isn't an unsolvable problem, but we should keep it in mind. Price discrimination can be acceptable and even desirable, in some cases, but I recommend that we keep an eye on it.

I relate to this comment. When Starbucks took an anti-union stance and condemned a union for supporting Palestine, I dropped Starbucks completely. I found that I didn't miss it at all, and it wasnt even that convenient. I spent more money at local coffee shops and got much higher quality goods for the same or even lower prices.

Lol, I did the SAME thing....boycotting Starbucks, although I now make coffee at home, bit I use pretty high quality ingredients. It totally improved my life overall.

Tis a perfectly cromulent word!

*_Um actually_* the right word is inregardless.

I think it's a good word even if it does not technically exist...

@@hankschannel it’s a fine imaginary word. Also this is the perfect time to say i bought your socks and i love them

Much better than gormful. IJS

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And some of us that can afford them don't want them! I value my attention!

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I had an old Android and not only were some apps not compatible, I just didn't have enough SPACE for all the apps people wanted me to install. Older phones didn't have as much memory. If I didn't wasn't to use that app at least once a week, I didn't put it on. Memory was too precious. I finally had to upgrade because the phone wouldn't hold a charge for longer than an hour and that is no longer a "mobile" phone. I couldn't afford the latest, so I looked for a refurbished phone not too old that had as much memory as I could afford. 6 months along, and I'm still surprised every time I remember I CAN install another obscure but handy app.

Legitimately the best fast food app that exists. It is wild how good it is compared to every other one.

In my experience the Wendy's app was pretty good (also good coupons, annoyingly it required you to confirm the CVV code for the saved card with each order), the Sonic app is decent (not too many deals but some, UI is acceptable), the Taco Bell app *was* good until I got banned because of doing chargebacks when they repeatedly left food out of my order. The best app is Little Ceaser's because with the pizza portal I can order and pick up a pizza without having to say a single word to a single human being.

I agree! Their rewards system is also top-tier, including their deals.

I agree that the app is the best restaurant app I've tried, but I disagree that it's*good.* 😂 I've had it glitch out on me many times.

Very true, could be great but it's just good. But most other restaurant apps are just awful.

oh, is that title super important in the industry?

​​@@geeksdo1tbetterIt is. A chef is usually someone with a trades certification who went to culinary school. You can expect them to have a lot of background education about the chemistry, culture, supply chain, etc. of food. Cooks simply follow the instructions that the chef provides them, so they require minimal (if any) prior experience/training.

As someone who used to work in advertising, I suspect that rest of that phrase was very carefully worded. Perhaps they would argue that "chef-prepared meal" works like "chef-designed meal" where a chef prepared that "meal" (here used like "recipe" or "menu") once upon a time. Absolutely very misleading.

@@geeksdo1tbetteris an engineer different than a construction worker?? 🤔🤔🤔

@@geeksdo1tbetter Well... kind of. It isn't a protected title. They could just as easily call them "engineer prepared" meals, as "engineer" isn't protected either (although Professional Engineer _is_ protected). That said, the general consensus in the industry is that chefs design recipes, and they also are typically the managers of the cooks. But honestly, the only thing it takes to become a chef is to convince someone to call you one.

I don't disagree with your premise, but while most tech startups operate at a loss before enshittification, McDonald's is almost certainly not losing significant money from these deals, just not making as much profit. The best and most consistently available deals are free fries or drink with a minimum purchase. I imagine these are offered because making these free saves the consumer several dollars but the company only loses cents of product. The customer feels like they're getting a great deal by getting a free $4 order of fries or soda, items that, based on everything I'm seeing online, have a 75-90% profit margin, as opposed to 55-70% on meal items.

Maybe this is just me not being immune to propaganda, but I don't think this will work the way you're saying. This isn't like an Uber or Facebook, where the network effect is so fantastically powerful. Burgers are a commodity. If the time ever comes where McDonald's raises prices to profit on their customer base, people will go next door to Wendy's.

@@evildude109 It's already happening and people are going to the grocery store instead of another fast food place.

@@evildude109 The thing is Wendy's is also raising prices.

That's why you get your Postmates order and then never use it again. Take advantage of the deal while they're trying to attract a user base and then bounce.

The stores can mark ice cream items as unavailable and often (but not always) do.

In my experience, it usually does. The employees can set the app so it stops selling those items at their location. But there is an element of human error in that they can accidentally forget to do it, or they might just leave those items perpetually disabled because they don't want to deal with it.

Why should it? The answer is always yes.

_Asking the real question here!!_

Nooooo

Type and availability of deals is regional. In my app, there is a still a daily low-price deal for fries, although it's $1.29 (inflation!) any size fries

I want to check the app to see if that changed in my area too, but I know if I open that app, I’m simply going to buy McDonald’s at midnight for no good reason 😂

​@@sentimentalhermitNot even just regional - I've had differences between parts of the same city.

$2 for a large fry in my app. 😢

order 2 little burgers but no fries!

Big way to break the stereotype: bring in all your welder and/or trucker friends, order 2 littles per person, split the fries appropriately by the group numbers. 2 littles means twice as much bread AND toppings. And then there is that little sense of comradery and community that comes from fighting over fries XD

I absolutely love this!

How is the packaging situation? I've read that Hello Fresh and Factor are pretty bad on packing small quantities of food in a lot of extra paper/plastic.

Factor gets sent to you like a frozen dinner tray, so it’s one plastic tray, sometimes a small plastic sauce container and lid inside, and a sheet of plastic lid, and that’s in a cardboard sleeve. The shipping box uses paper insulation padding (no plastic or metal layer) and plastic water pouches frozen to ice. The packs can be melted and then used for watering plants and recycled, according to the pack marking. So all in all I’d say significantly less waste and more recyclable products than Hello Fresh, which has each component individually wrapped in plastic, uses plastic insulation padding with a metal layer (to my memory) and has non-water ice packs.

Argh! Did you have an option of requesting No Substitutes after that? Or even, getting a refund for that part of your order? so frustrating!

I didn't realize Factor was basically just frozen dinners until I finally looked it up. I have no idea why anyone would pay for it. I actually ended up subscribing to Hello Fresh a few months ago and I don't regret it. Yes, the price is too expensive, but when they screw up (and they will send you rotten scallions or carrots at some point) the compensation is way more than the value of those items, even at their prices (I just got $20 credit for not sending me enough potatoes and carrots). I don't think the packaging for Hello Fresh is that bad. It does vary depending on your distributor as far as I know. I think eventually everyone will "graduate" from Hello Fresh to just buying their own stuff, but it's more about convenience and consistency. I pay more for the food, but I use all of it with almost zero waste. And since I have to plan my meals a week ahead, I can't just decide to eat mac n cheese every night instead of something healthy.

If this keeps going, I really want a comparison to the cost of cooking at home or a decent sit-down restaurant in Missoula but I don't know if that's going to happen with a Factor sponsorship.

And then they make the next size up just a little bit more expensive so people also think "well I was going to get the little but the regular is just a better value" even if they don't want a big burger.

Internalized toxic masculinity really got us fucked up bc I was doing that shit without realizing it until hank j called me out

It's not zero sum so it doesn't translate that way. You're either willing to pay more to wait less or you wait the normal amount of time. You're not forced to wait additional time. My colleague having global entry doesn't imply that getting through security takes longer for me.

@@BTrain-is8ch I mean if anything, it might imply a shorter wait for you since everyone with global entry is either not in the same line as you, or if they are is speeding up your line by being handled faster.

The global entry argument isn't as valid when you consider Mobile Passport control, which gives you access to an expedited lane for free.

@@BTrain-is8ch That depends on the program. Global Entry and TSA Pre genuinely save time for everyone involved by pre-empting some of the work. But many airports have programs that are just paying money to go to the front of the line.

💯👏👏👏💯 this! well put, sir, very well put indeed. ps. 😍 the profile pic - your li'l doggie is TOOO flibbin' cute!!!

well, language is defined by how we use it. literally means figuratively, and irregardless is a word, and means regardless. words are weird!

So... Fotwenty

It's that time of day again...

This seems absolutely normal to me...

@@hankschannel All spreadsheet programs have number formats!

Because you live in Missoula, where they regularly celebrate 'Hempfest'​@@hankschannel. I think you might be biased

Maybe I'm just being dumb, but what are some situations that would require a person to refund or dispute an order?

They can probably use the app pretty effectively to do "surge pricing." Maybe they don't actually change their prices but if there's a day or an hour where they are getting a lot of orders they could switch to the least popular discounts. I could see something like discounts changing based on the hour of the order and if you order at three (least popular time to eat) you get significantly better coupons than if you order at noon. If a given McDonalds has so many orders that they're backlogged they get switch to the worst possible coupons and it could all be determined by algorithms.

The five guys patty was made today and not frozen, even if the cows were from the same factory farm the prep has an affect on taste

Nah bro one time i literally only got the cupful and I literally was about to go Karen in there because they know dam well to give me an overflowing cup.

Interesting...I wonder if Canada's regulations are tighter!

@@hankschannel I live in California and a similar thing happens. They fill up the cup, then they fill up a metal tin with fries and pour that into the bag. So your fries are whatever size cup you paid for plus the size of the tin.

@hankschannel entirely possible, though up until now I'd assumed it was a cost control measure

+

Exactly

What Hank's saying is that if you're making $20/hr at your job, and spending 10 minutes on the app saves you $10, you're saving more money than you'd be earning if you had spent those 10 minutes working. But someone who earns $70/hr wouldn't.

​@@BassLiberators Maybe it is what he meant, but much like perfectly spherical cows or perpetual motion machines, that sort of scenario is only how things work in an idealized abstraction. _It's not real._ Just as friction makes perpetual motion impossible, market forces make 'good' discriminatory spending impossible, without _extreme_ regulations for how prices are set. In reality, the meal would cost $10 total if companies weren't allowed to engage in discriminatory pricing, but because they _can,_ the cost of the meal is increased to $30 dollars, but people can spend 30 minutes on average to save $20. So without discriminatory spending, both people spend $10 dollars on the meal, because that's all the poor person can afford. With discriminatory spending, because one of the _laws of economics_ is that a thing is always worth the maximum amount of resources you can squeeze out of people, the poor person spends $10 and 30 minutes for that same meal, while the middle-class person spends $30 for it. Because you need to make people _feel_ the savings before they'll actually do the math, 'barely worth it' is never good enough. Time is very precious to _everyone,_ especially the poor, so it has to _hurt_ not doing it. And because those without much money live in a state of _constant stress_ about their own survival, it _really_ hurts. That stress is why the poorest people are among the most vulnerable to falling into drug habits, and have the hardest time quitting. People are medicating that stress. (Just to be clear, that's still a simplification, the real change between a world without discriminatory spending and one with it, is how long wages are frozen while inflation naturally increases prices. The minimum wage is ultimately set by the _affordability_ (not price) of food. Affordability calculations include the use of coupons and apps to save money. And all other wages are set in comparison to the minimum wage. Exact same outcome, but sneakier in implementation.) (Edit: Real talk, the way affordability is really 'calculated' is just by measuring the homelessness and starvation rates. If those are 'normal', petitions and outcry to increase the minimum wage go nowhere, but if they are increasing to dangerous levels, then suddenly increasing the minimum wage becomes a topic 'worthy of debate' by lawmakers.) And because wealthier people often have 10 times the wealth of poor people, they barely feel the tripled price, but poor people _have_ to expend the time, even though they have even _less_ time to spend than wealthier people, and unlike money, there is no way for _anyone_ to get more time in a week, without harming their own health and freedom. Money is a renewable resource, time is not. That's a big part of why we've been having a lot of K-shaped 'economic recoveries', lately, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

@@falleithani5411 I respectfully disagree. Not all meals could be $10 or McDonalds would go out of business. People like Hank essentially subsidise the people who use discounts. If some people like Hank overpay, then McDonalds doesn't need to make maximum profit on every meal. The can overcharge some customers and undercharge others It's the same way a gym works. 90% of people don't use their membership enough basically pay for the other 10% to get an incredible deal. Charging everyone $15 per meal only benefits the rich.

0.39 including wages?

@@geeksdo1tbetter Nope. The individual ROI on their items is ridiculous. But even with wages calculated they are still making around 400%-500% ROI. Obviously this will depend on the sandwich, ingredients, etc.

@@geeksdo1tbetter If a fast food worker earns $15 per hour, but helps make 60 burgers per hour, that means it costs 25 cents per burger to pay that person. If the cashier takes 60 orders an hour at the same wage, that's another 25 cents per burger. You could pay each of those people $30 per hour and only have to raise the price of the burger by 50 cents. I have no clue what the actual productivity of fast food employees tends to be, of course, but wages have a much lower effect on prices than people realize. What happens instead is that if a person's wages rise, then businesses raise their prices in order to capture that extra money instead of that person getting a better quality of life. That's why minimum wage has to be tied to inflation and regularly adjusted to price of living in order to work.

There was an article some years back, when a minimum wage increase was first discussed/debated. In order to pay a more livable wage, the increase to the customer was very negligible. They used McDonald's as an example. The price increase on a Big Mac was maybe ten cents, very small. Most of the cost is greed, blaming everything like wages as an excuse. This applies to everything. We live in a very greedy country.

@@skyirwin1445 I would have to agree, but as someone who used to blame greed I now blame education. If we educated our students on how to be financially literate rather than not teach them at all and throw them into college for they will know nothing about making a quarter of a million dollar investment. So TLDR, its a mix of greed and people just not being prepared. Thanks for sharing your input

Making it convoluted is part of the way they make it confusing. It's like a gambling system...the more opportunities for confusing you and abstracting things the better.

@@hankschannel Honestly I'm just impressed that there are people whose job it is to keep the backend math straight so that when I spend 23 million Starbucks points to book an Air Canada flight nobody is losing money in that transaction

@@Idefilms There's a story about a guy who bought thousands of pudding cups in order to get cheap frequent flier miles. Pretty good read.

$60/hr for a cleaner?! That's wild! I might be wrong but not many cleaners are paid that much. I'm really happy that you pay her that much, it sounds like a win-win situation. It might sound bizarre but doing that you are making the world a bit more a better place. Thanks for doing that from an Italian from the Boot 💜

@@paolagrando5079 I mean, casual rate is a thing due to no leave entitlements or retirement savings etc, and cleaners have to go between houses and stuff. So she's not making that much as the equivalent of an office job - roughly you halve it to get the hourly equivalent for a fully benefitted job. Which is of course why $40/hr seemed too low to me! We *did* pay her through the pandemic lockdown though - I suspect some of her clients did but most didn't. We were lucky enough to get paid through the lockdown so we tried to provide some stability to the people we relied on, too. We still ended up saving more money than usual through that time period.