Comment on Mildly McInfuriating
orclev@lemmy.world 3 days agoIt has been suggested that’s part of the reason for the price surge. A lot of people just aren’t buying from McDumpster anymore and so in order to hit the same levels of year over year profit increase they’ve raised their prices to make up for lost sales. So they have significantly fewer people paying significantly more money for the same shitty food. Ultimately this will lead to a death spiral, but they’re so massive it’s going to take a really really long time before they hit the bottom.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 days ago
But here’s the really annoying thing about McDonald’s: they don’t care if their sales trend towards zero. McDonald’s makes all their money on the real estate values of their restaurants, not on food sales.
WhyFlip@lemmy.world 3 days ago
How’s that?
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Say you want to open your own McDonald’s branch. You pass their financial vetting, get on their waiting list, go through McDonald’s boot camp, then McDonald’s corporate builds a new McDonald’s restaurant on land they own (or acquires land before doing so), then they lease the land to you, sell you all the equipment for the kitchen, the furniture for the dining area, and all the food and other supplies you need.
The prices are set according to their rules, the food is provided to you by them, the recipes are all very simple (you learn them at boot camp), all you do is hire and train the staff and operate the restaurant. You pay McDonald’s for everything, your profits are entirely based on sales, they own the land your restaurant sits on. If you decide you want out they’ll find someone else to take over.
Just as residential real estate has skyrocketed in price, so has commercial real estate (even more so). If you decide you’re out and McDonald’s corporate decides that location is no longer profitable then they sell the property with a large return on their investment.
WhyFlip@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Thanks for the detailed response.
rumba@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Single establishment commercial space may be pretty expensive still but there’s an awful lot of bigger buildings starting to feel the burn from work from home. I wonder how many of the big buildings would have to fall before the commercial real estate industry takes a serious dive and they lose a crap ton of bank?