Is it possible it's designed around the average order, so the app effectively punishes you for using it? Like Gilbert Daniels discovered in his work for the US Air Force.

"In the early 2020s, McDonalds customers had a serious problem: the McDonald's app made it a royal PITA to buy a single Diet Coke."

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-... ;-)

I would be willing to wager that greater than 99% of people have never used the McDonald’s app to order anything. Perhaps you could elaborate?

It seems like it is a dark pattern to encourage you to order more items. It is extremely irritating when you just want to order one item.

That’s a conclusion, not an elaboration. Perhaps you can start at the beginning, and describe what steps must be taken to complete an order for a diet coke?

If you are interested enough to read someone else's experience, might I suggest downloading the free program yourself and investigating?

It doesn't work well for me because of payment issues, but putting together an order seems to work.

Are the steps different for regular Coke?

The point is that ordering a single item like this should be fast.

But is that really the main use case? Do people often go to McDonald's to order just one item?

If I wanted a Diet Coke, I'm more likely to go to a convenience store. The operation would be simpler: I pick up exactly the item I want from the shelf, pay for it, and leave. I don't need to wait on anybody to bring me anything. Especially for something as generic as a Diet Coke.

If I am at McDonald's, I'm expecting to order McDonald's food. As a designer, I wouldn't optimize for the case of somebody ordering just one item that they could get elsewhere.

That doesn't excuse arbitrary up-selling and obfuscated interfaces, but it doesn't surprise me that ordering a single item (especially a non-food item) isn't as fast as it could be.

Why are you ordering a diet Coke from McDonalds anyways? This is highly overpriced and a watered down version of what you could get at a gas station.

Can of soda $1 Fountain soda from McDonalds $3

Am I missing something?

Irrelevant, and fountain drinks are only $1 at McDonald’s anyway.

Not correct. McDonald's is well known among Coke aficionados for using a different syrup mix ratio and very precise water and syrup temperatures to produce the ideal product. It is not the same as what you get at a gas station.