There's also the price discrimination angle of it. McDonald's has at least two sizeable groups of customers: people who frequently eat there, and are thus a change in the McDonald's pricing is significant in their total budget, and people who will occasionally eat there.

Presumably, some analyst at McDonald's found that the latter group wasn't particularly price sensitive, so they found a way to divide the two groups, and charge them different prices. The occasional McDonald's customer isn't going to jump through hoops, they just want to roll up, get their burger, and leave. The frequent customer is more likely to respond to changes in pricing in both directions. Having a system to actively prompt the frequent consumers to go more often, and then charge them a price that they are willing to pay, while still getting the full benefit of the people who don't really care how much food costs is a win-win from their perspective.

The surveillance is just a sweetener.

I fall squarely in the second camp, but what ended up happening was that I went from going occasionally, to not going at all.

McDonald's app-free pricing is now butting against actual sit-down restaurants, or a good local shop. I'm not price sensitive per se, but I don't want a raw deal, so I'll pick the better option. McD's used to be cheap and fast, now it's neither really.

Their sales are falling, and they're doing $5 deals now, so I'm definitely not the only one picking other options.

Yeah, they definitely got greedy with it. My go-to example is to point out the fact that In-N-Out used to be the fast food option for when you were willing to pay a few extra bucks to be served a better burger by someone who didn't look like they wanted to kill themselves. Now they're the cheapest option, by a substantial margin, and they didn't change a damn thing.

In my city we have a McDonalds and a Shake Shack on the opposite of the same block, and given they cost about the same, guess which one does volume? Ridiculous.

I always hear this but I've never found this. The couple of times a year I eat McDonald's I check and it's the same. There are specific deals they'll have in the app like "2 filet of fish for $7 instead of $4 each" or something but by and large the prices are the same.

I don't know for sure but it may be regional. In my area, they always have a $5 off $20 deal that makes things slightly more palatable but even still, it's just bringing the prices back to what they really should be as others have said. I've uninstalled the app and completely stop going there entirely, the quality (not that it was ever great to be clear) is pretty terrible and there are so many better local places with way better value.

If you are in the 'couple of times a year' consumer type bucket you might not be valuable enough to do the deep discounting to. They offer the better deals to the 'couple of times a month' or more frequent users to keep them hooked.

I'm more okay with never eating from what are, by my use anyway, public restrooms than installing some app.

...which is why I don't eat McDonald's. Also, don't forget, the app limits your legal rights as well. No lawsuit or class action for you, bub.

>They also punish you by charging wildly higher prices without the app.

I don't think we have this problem in Australia, so I haven't noticed...however the converse way of looking at this is they DISCOUNT your meal using the revenue from selling data on you! Win win, right?

...right?