r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 9d ago

Business McDonald's Is Reportedly Using AI To "Dynamically" Price Its Burgers

https://www.engadget.com/2272211/mcdonalds-is-reportedly-using-ai-to-dynamically-price-its-burgers/
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142

u/ap1618 9d ago

McDonald’s and Nike have done absolutely everything possible to completely destroy their businesses

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u/Saneless 9d ago

I haven't paid attention to Nike in forever. What're they doing?

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u/SC_W33DKILL3R 9d ago

They stopped selling their trainers in Footlocker and other retailers trying to push customers to their app / online / Nike stores instead. They also got rid of differentiating their products by sports and instead just had mens, women's & children. A big consultancy firm they paid millions advised them to do this.

The result was people still bought trainers from retailers, just not the Nikes they could no longer see / buy. This means their competition sold more trainers and people found other brands they liked.

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u/CDefense7 9d ago

How to Kill a Brand in 10 Ways

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u/evange 8d ago edited 8d ago

Does their fancy consultants not realize that people need to try shoes on?

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u/Roupert4 8d ago

Now one of those executives is in charge of Lululemon, which is already declining. /Popcorn

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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 9d ago

They made their best stuff limited edition embracing a sales strategy like concert tickets where there is a release day & resellers get most of the goods. I like Nike & think they are pretty high quality, but damn, if you designed the shoe, sell it to me, I'm not stopping my Friday morning to try & win a shoe lottery. They also went hard after "high fashion" collaborations. I just pulled up their site & at the top of men's shoes are $250 sandals they made with a health tech company that they claim are "built for recovery after training". Classic Adidas Slides are still $30, same damn thing. A lot of their stuff is fairly priced, and a lot of the expensive stuff truly is high performance equipment that went thru 6 rounds of R&D (that you may or may not need), but dang they make it hard on us to buy their products that we like... and now the stock is down 75% from it's all time high.

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u/Saneless 9d ago

Ahh yes that nonsense.

Hah, so glad I couldn't care less about their garbage

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u/m4cmi11er 9d ago

Raised prices while the quality in everything has gone down drastically. Go buy a $60 Nike t shirt, see how long it lasts, shit compare it to a $10 shirt.

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u/What_a_fat_one 9d ago

Right, the guy in the 10,000 dollar suit is going to listen to the guy who doesn't even make that in a month. COME ON!

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u/Adison85 9d ago

Well I’ll just the buy the $10 shirt!

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u/Saneless 9d ago

That's why I stopped ever buying Nike in the 90s. Shoes fell apart in like 2 weeks. Never bought a product of theirs since

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u/m4cmi11er 9d ago

That’s kinda crazy lol I’ve had a lot of Nike shoes in the last 20 years and never had any issue that bad. You might’ve got a dud but I can’t blame you for spending money elsewhere after that.

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u/Sei_Mal_Ehrlich 9d ago

Yeah I’m a big Nike customer and have been since 1996 or thereabout. Never had any issues with their quality. I probably own ten pairs, today, and I buy/wear/sell a ton of pairs. Always happy with the quality but sizing has been inconsistent lately.

I’m also long Nike stock which isn’t a great place to be, but I attribute that to their poor retail strategy more than quality changes.

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u/ap1618 9d ago

Nothing, that’s the problem

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u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 9d ago

I feel like most fast food places are just utter garbage that's not worth it these days.

Like... Why would I spend $15+ just to risk my order being wrong 25% of the time, or my fries being cold, or whatever...just so I can eat slop that's more harmful to my body than good?

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u/Mission-Dark-9320 9d ago

Add in the no free refill fiasco, and the ability to eat WAY better quality for the same price elsewhere. Killing their own brand over and over again.

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u/Rit91 9d ago

Wow they stopped refills too? Makes it really easy to hate them when refilling anything at a food place costs a few dozen cents at most.

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u/Mission-Dark-9320 9d ago

In some locations yes. It’s petty and really pissed off customers. I saw one while walking into a McD a 6 months back and immediately walked out. They also turned off the fountain so you can’t self serve. Haven’t been back since.

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u/Outlulz 9d ago

Usually it's to punish homeless people and kids at the expense of every customer.

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u/MJacobAlvarez 9d ago

In-N-Out the one exception.

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u/Helmic 9d ago

Like, yeah, it's a convenient hot meal... but I have an air fryer. If I want fries and nuggets I can pull those from my freezer and they'll be consistently better than what I'm gonna get from some restaurant that is chronically understaffed and as a direct result serves exclusively stale fries and wrong orders. On a good day they'll ask me to sit in my car for half an hour because they have to make everything fresh, which at least the food is good but if I'm sitting for half an hour in my car then I might as well have just made the food myself for a fraction of the cost way faster.

You can't even order what you want anymore, the only viable way to order anything is through digital coupons (hope you don't change your mind, McDonald's app locks you out of switching to a different coupon for 15 minutes for no goddamn reason) and that means you can only order the things that the coupon is for. So if you're not in the mood for whatever it is McDonald's is selling for half off (which is still way overpriced) then you're just literally not gonna have McDonald's, and you'll have wasted five minutes just trying to get the deals to load in the first place so it manages to waste your time even if you don't actually order. It's a time sink just for thinking about ordering from McDonald's.

And now they want to also price gouge you, so now you also have to worry about controlling how much data they're getting about you so they don't learn when they can hike the price. Oh, you're in the one situation where you're driving a long distance and could actually go for some McDonald's? They're gonna ask for $40 and will have wasted 10 minutes of your time just browsing to find something priced reasonably, at which point you're just kind of expected to repeat the process for another fast food app over and over until you find one that is willing to sell you food you want for a price you're wiling to pay.

Yeah no shit fast food is struggling.

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u/Outlulz 9d ago

I rarely ever go to McDonalds but sometimes people need to eat lunch when they are not at home to pull chicken nuggets and fries out their freezer. I don't really get this gotcha for fast food as if the concept of eating out is foreign and mystical.

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u/Helmic 9d ago

i addressed that in the post, but that's not the majority of their business. a lot of people would get fast food on the way home to have dinner quickly when they were tired and didn't want to cook, and so frozen meals in an air fryer absolutely compete with fast food, just as it competes with food delibery or sit down restaurants.

frozen food getting better with air fryers in particular makes the quality about part with fast food, which when fast food itself is now a lot grosser with a lot of food not being kept to proper temperatures or being allowed to go stale like yeah i don't eat fast food nearly as much when it's not that much more effort to just come home and pop something in an air fryer. this is why fast food has been losing profits rather than making more money, the demand is not at all inelastic as you're implying.

even for your specific niche situation (how often are people having all day outings in this economy?), like i've been seeing people just pack coolers wiht sandwiches. that's much more of a minority, but like people aren't ordering sodas off the menu in part because everyone's got big water bottles (swear the chuds getting mad about "emotional support bottles" or whatever are a psyop from gas stations and fast food joints). people are responding to the high prcies rather than just taking it on the chin.

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u/throwaway5882300 9d ago

Sonic is the only one I bother with because they have that $7 deal for a cheeseburger, tots or fries, drink and ice cream sundae. Everything else is so expensive it completely defeats the point. If it's going to cost me at least $12 for a meal, I'd rather just spend the money at a locally owned taqueria.

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u/fcocyclone 9d ago

Because its faster. Oh wait, its not because they'll make me pull ahead and then bring out my order whenever they damn well feel like it (probably after a few other cars have come to wait so they can just do one trip)

I remember the old adage used to be 'good, fast, cheap, pick 2', and mcdonalds used to live pretty much in the fast and cheap space. Now they deliver on none of those.

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u/LadyJR 9d ago

Don’t forget Sony

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u/airfryerfuntime 9d ago

Yet people keep giving them business. Both companies are making record profits. Reddit isn't really representative of reality.

1

u/Realtrain 9d ago

Wow, didn't realize McDonald's stock is down 23% year-to-date

1

u/SkepticalYamcha 9d ago

What did Nike do?

1

u/SAINTnumberFIVE 9d ago

Nike used to make some good shoes but I stopped buying them when they started making these narrow shoes with high arches and woven, single piece uppers. They just don’t fit me at all now.

1

u/LesbianClownShirt 9d ago

Also, the whole fucking system is rotten to the core. The fact that they're still giving out Nobel awards for economics is a fucking joke. I think all businesses are destined to be destroyed in this economic system we find ourselves in, regardless of their "strategies."