Once Upon a Time fast food was the quickest easiest and cheapest dining alternative for people on the go and it's still fairly quick and easy but if you've been in a fast food joint recently then you've probably noticed that it's not quite so cheap anymore no dude this isn't happening right we didn't make it here and now we're broke what went wrong well today we're going to take a look at why fast food got so expensive but before we get started be sure to subscribe to the weird history Food Channel Channel after that please leave a comment and let us know what other food related topics you want to hear about next okay keep an eye on your wallet because things are about to get a little pricey the history of fast food more or less begins at a castle a White Castle that is founded by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson the first White Castle opened in Witchita Kansas in 1921 assembly lines were all the rage back then and Ingram and Anderson seized on the fat to come up with a now standard model for fast food places including the limited menu the fast service and the low prices the restaurant was a huge success and spawned a number of imitations including McDonald's which was founded by Richard and Maurice McDonald in California in 1940 in 1948 in an Out Burger would open up the first drive-through fast food restaurant in Baldwin Park California and with that the fast food experience as we know it today was pretty much complete but it wouldn't be until after World War II that America got on the highway to being a fast food nation after the war the US experienced a period of unprecedented prosperity and built an elaborate new network of national highways Americans were driving further from home on an increasingly regular basis and recognizable franchise chains became like familiar friends in a Strange Land fast forward to the present and the US now has the largest fast food industry in the entire world given fast food's relationship to obesity and various related illnesses that may not be such a great thing but have you tried fast food it is delicious there are a lot of reasons American consumers fell in love with fast food and it's not just the french fries although that's probably a big part of it for starters there was the speed and convenience obviously hitting a drive-thru is a heck of a lot faster and easier than going to a full service restaurant and fast food advertising campaigns have long targeted people on the go who are just in need of a quick meal but over the decades American families also increasingly became two income families and the convenience of fast food made it a good good stop gap for parents that just didn't have time to cook anymore no longer just for travelers fast food started to become a standard part of many people's diet while the speed and convenience were certainly a draw it was really the price of fast food that the public fell in love with full service restaurants could be expensive but at a fast food place you could feed your entire family for relatively cheap and during the 1980s and '90s chains increasingly began luring customers in by offering Extra Value combo meals combos as you likely know typically include a burger or other entree a side such as fries and a drink at a price lower than you could get them individually it's not that much lower but it was enough because the rise of combo meals powered an explosion in the popularity of fast food the 1990s era McDonald's Extra Value Meal was pretty typical offering six different options including a Big Mac meal a two cheeseburger meal a quarter pounder with cheese meal and a McChicken meal each for $2. 99 as well as a mcgrilled chicken classic meal for $3. 29 and a double quar Pounder with cheese meal for $3.
99 and of course everything was super sizable for an extra 39 or at least it was until the release of the documentary super siiz me in 2004 and that was the end of that but it wasn't just McDonald's every fast food chain eventually offered some version of a value meal or a value menu and most if not all still do that being said the value meal of today doesn't quite hold the same value as the value meals of days gone by in fact fast food has gotten pretty damn expensive if you went to McDonald's back when they first started doing their thing in the 1940s you could feed your entire family for under a dollar taking inflation into account that's equivalent to about $22 in 2024 which is a pretty good deal for a family dinner hamburgers were 15 cents back then cheeseburgers were 19 cents and Fries were 10 cents adjusted for inflation that would be roughly $175 for a hamburger 225 for a cheeseburger and $115 for the fries but that's not actually what those things cost these days a direct comparison is hard to make because today different locations charge different prices for menu items depending on where they are but as of May 2024 the McDonald's located in the Southern California town of Downey which is incidentally the oldest operating location in the world charges about $280 for a hamburger $3 for a cheeseburger and $390 for fries so it doesn't take a math whiz to see there's a little more going on than just inflation in fact according to at least one report McDonald's has increased the price of their food by over 100% over the last decade which is actually more than three times the rate of inflation McDonald's disputes that number but prices have definitely risen quite a bit a medium friese which cost $159 in 2014 is now on average $379 in the same period a 10piece McNugget meal doubled from $5. 99 to $10. 99 and A quar pounder with cheese went from $539 to 11.
99 the McChicken once a staple of the dollar menu now costs three times that in some places that's pretty pricey especially for a place that was offering two out of its four most iconic menu items including the Big Mac quar pound with cheese fileo fish and 10piece McNuggets for $5 as recently as 2016 the overall result of the higher prices has been less customers paying more money for their fast food and there is only so much a person will pay for a fast food Burger McDonald's seems to be the worst offender when it comes to jacking up prices but they're far from loan Taco Bell for example was once famous for having low prices that made them a favorite among Frugal customers night owls and Chihuahua that like to party but since 2014 their prices are up an average of 80% the Doritos Locos Taco which was $139 in 2014 now costs a whopping $259 a Cheesy Gordita Crunch went from $249 to $4.
