Eight years ago I wrote up a visit I took to the burger joint Harvey’s, reviewing a meal deal that was $5.99. Flash forward to 2025 and my coupon for the same meal deal was $8.99. That’s actually not too bad in terms of the inflation in fast food prices that’s been widely reported. And by “widely reported” I mean the thousands of YouTube videos complaining about it.
I thought the price was reasonable, but this was with a coupon. I also paid for it with a gift card a friend had given me for looking after their house while they were away. As it turned out, I had $11 remaining on the gift card and with tax the meal deal came to a little over $10. So, not wanting to leave any money on the card, I figured I’d get an extra order of small fries and pay the balance with the extra dollar and change I had in my pocket.
Didn’t happen! Without the coupon, do you know what a small container of fries cost? $4.35 with tax! And we’re talking about a little box with maybe 20 fries in it. I said no to that. But it made me realize what people have been complaining about. I went online and checked out what I would have paid for the same items without a coupon. It came to $14.67 before tax. The kilter is the fountain drink, which was $3.09. But then fountain drinks have always been a scam, at restaurants or cinemas or wherever you get them. So in total it came to around $17 with tax. For not nearly enough food to satisfy an adult human. As I said in my review back in 2017, I could easily eat three of these and still be hungry.
At least I now understood then what all the fuss was about. I was left wondering how these places stay in business. I guess a lot of the chains are feeling the stress, but I still see people visiting them, and sometimes they’re even getting their orders delivered. This economy doesn’t make sense to me.
Alex Good 
The ice cream men over here sell this ice cream called a ’99’. Not sure if they have them where you live. They were called 99 because they only cost 99 pence when I was a kid. They not cost £1.20.
Same deal with Poundland where you could find general cheap goods for £1, and now almost all the stuff there is a minimum of £1.50.
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Sometimes Dairy Queen have a sale where you can get a 99 cent cone. And we have Dollarama where everything used to cost a dollar but they’ve given up holding the line on that. Still, the inflation there seems minor compared to what’s happening with fast food. Twenty bucks for a crumby little meal is not a good deal.
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The 99 refers to the chocolate flake in the ice cream, not the price. The first ones were launched by Cadbury’s in the 1930s and decimal coinage wasn’t even about then, they would have been in shillings and pence.
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Guess my dad lied to me when I was 6. I’ll never get over this.
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Haha, so sorry.
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Shillings and pence? Farthings and ha’pennies? No idea what you are talking about.
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Of course you don’t, you only know nickels, dimes and quarters.
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And loonies and toonies!
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That’s an insane price for small fries!
I didn’t know you guys had Dairy Queens. Growing up, we had a DQ nearby and I well remember walking up there to get a real cherry Coke. Not an old-fashioned cherry Coke because, back then, it was just called doing it right.
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Yeah, Dairy Queen has been here forever. At least since I was a wee lad. Even though they no longer have caramel dip on their cones. For some reason they canceled that.
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Yeah, I don’t understand how fastfood is staying in business. The McD’s in our area is doing killer business, even while not having nearly enough help. I see the drivethrough is full every single day.
I used to go to McD’s a couple of times a year on a whim because it tasted yummy to me since it was different. I could even afford it. Now? I can’t justify spending that much money. It feels like I am throwing money into the trashcan.
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That’s how it feels to me too. I haven’t had a burger at McD’s for decades. I think people go in their to pick up little things, especially if there’s a promotion on. So they just get an order of fries or an ice cream or a coffee. To actually get a meal there makes no sense.
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yeah, I only stop in now if they are having a special and even those, well, they are almost more expensive than the stuff was regularly 10years ago.
I think my last fast food was 2 years ago at a wendy’s on the job. We were at a job site 2hrs away and I was starving on the ride home. That’s the last I can remember.
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