We Have No Donuts
The decline & fall of American fast food - killing the planet and everyone's wallets
We shouldn’t eat fast food. Everyone knows that factory-made, theoretically uniform, ultra-processed foods are bad for them. A growing number know that fast food is also bad for the environment. Many people think that fast food and factory food business models are bad for workers. With ever-escalating prices and sinking quality, it’s hard to say what fast food is good for these days.
Oh! That’s right: shareholder profits.
The Del Taco Debacle
One of our favorite restaurants, Crab & Fin in St. Armands Circle in Sarasota, isn’t fast food. This fine dining establishment has friendly, welcoming bartenders, including one who spent quite a bit of time in Southern California. Whenever we’d go in, he’d mention that construction was proceeding at the new Del Taco in Bradenton. We told him we’d visit whenever it was open, but it seemed like it took forever —
Finally, last August when Bruce was in the hospital waiting for his cervical spine surgery, I visited one of the two Bradenton Del Tacos.
I used to always find Del Taco to be acceptable fast food in a pinch. First, they had several tacos that weren’t totally processed (Tacos Del Carbon, non-fried fish, corn tortillas); second — a Del Cheeseburger used to taste a lot like the small cheeseburgers I’d get while at the beach when I was growing up. This is primarily a West Coast fast food chain and it used to be significantly better than Taco Bell (rhymes with h**l).
How excited I was to be able to go to Del Taco — at last!
Well. Yeah.
$20 later, I had a gigantic tanker of iced tea that turned out to be sweet instead of unsweetened, and two barbecue flavored meatlike objects wrapped in foamy wheat tortillas.
Nasty spongy, foamy fast food tortillas.
I couldn’t eat it. Bruce didn’t like it either. The hospital food was much better.
That’s right: Bruce’s hospital food was at least twice as palatable as what Del Taco was dishing out. By palatable, I mean both tasty and edible.
What about McDonald’s? I haven’t eaten there in at least two years. Let’s check my dormant McDonald’s app. What will a Big Mac Meal cost?
A cool $9.49. Over $20 with tax, even for a couple, much less children.
It’s difficult to find current pricing for McDonald’s on a national level, but SavingSpot website compiled Big Mac prices by state last year.
My Big Mac by itself actually came in slightly lower than the $4.47 Florida state average, at $4.39.
The small hamburger isn’t even on the dollar menu any more. It’s $1.69 and the dollar menu sign now says $1, $2, and $3.
McDonald’s has fewer customers now, but higher profits. 2023 was a banner year for the fast food giant, with revenue topping $6.41 billion in December 2023 and a gross profit of $3.65 billion. McDonald’s gross profit margin even reached its highest level ever at 57.1% in December 2023.
Make More Money By Serving “Premium” Customers
Nearly all businesses are changing their focus in an effort to seek the highest possible profit, and many — McDonald’s included — are focusing on charging higher prices for “premium” items aimed at “premium” or higher-income customers.
Much as with many other things we were taught in school, this process of “premiumization” has nothing to do with “what the market will bear” or “supply and demand.” Apparently McDonald’s first-quarter 2024 earnings call for stockholders emphasized their lack of interest in serving customers making less than $45,000 a year in preference to serving the smaller group of better-off customers with higher-priced menu items.
In this year’s first earnings call, McDonald’s executives said they were losing lower income customers “to the grocery store.” A $10 Big Mac meal isn’t affordable to a working person: eating five of them per week equals $50, which is a week’s worth of groceries for my family, provided I am cooking simply and using limited amounts of protein.
It seems to me that fast food is one of those 20th century inventions that has run its course, although of course it remains popular worldwide among many consumer segments. In the mid-20th century, fast food started out to be convenient, reliable and standardized, simple, and affordable. Then it became “Super-Sized” and everyone seemed to rapidly gain weight. The industry diversified, looking to serve younger customers with jaded palates. Now — fast food giants are telling the public they just want to serve wealthier customers with “premium” items to make higher profits.
Wealthier customers can afford to eat at restaurants like Crab & Fin although it’s true: some billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates love fast food and gobble it eagerly. Some industry analysts predict that the global fast food market, already approaching $600 billion (so you can see, McDonald’s has over 10% of the total fast food market worldwide), will top $1 trillion by 2023.
Even with a growing awareness of the bad health impacts of fast food and an emerging consciousness that the entire fast food business model — from genetically-modified seed and animal to double drive-through lanes and overworked, underpaid workers — is one with far more downsides than upsides —
Fast food profits are still growing.
We Have No Donuts
I didn’t grow up with Dunkin Donuts (aka “Dunkin”) but Bruce did, along with many of my other friends. Along with Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger King, Dunkin is ubiquitous at every freeway exit in Florida. There are two Dunkins in our small town (as well as two McDonald’s, two Burger Kings, and two Wendy’s).
Fast food isn’t in the “healthy” condition its stock market prices and profits would seem to indicate.
The other evening, Bruce and I were out, and I admit — it was my idea. “I feel like a donut,” I said.
We pulled up to our nearest Dunkin and it had just closed.
But the other one was open!
We drove back up the highway and went through the drive-through. Bruce requested four chocolate cream donuts. When I ordered, the worker said, “We don’t have those.”
“What donuts do you have?” I asked.
“We don’t have any donuts,” she said. And they were an hour from closing.
I don’t know if you remember “back in the day” but a donut store closing without at least a few leftover donuts …
Well, they did change their name to just “Dunkin.” I wonder what actual food they did have, or just a bunch of machine-made sweet coffee drinks.
This facility also sold Baskin & Robbins ice cream but we didn’t ask about it. The only flavors they had left were probably wood and fish.
I guess our problem was that we really aren’t wealthy, premium customers.
Damn those shareholders! They're ruining EVERYTHING!
"Fast Food Nation" is a harrowing book. Deeply engaging, but lays this all out.
Wall Street fintech-bros are determined to grind everything into nothing, after which they will have the gall to look surprised. But I can take some solace in that Marx was right, and capitalism is currently consuming itself. After having consumed everything else, of course.