FAST COMPANY – In the national food fight over who is to blame for inflation, the casual-dining stalwart Chili’s has a new campaign that singles out one villain in particular: fast food.
A new arcade-era-style promotional game pushing a deal involving its Big Smasher burger invites players to square off against “the evil Fast Food Syndicate,” which for years has “raised burger prices and lowered quality, even on its so-called ‘value meals.’”
The brands in the game are fictional, but the sentiment it’s tapping into is very real.
Complaints about inflation and rising fast-food prices have been notably loud, and McDonald’s in particular has become a go-to target online.
Last month, the president of McDonald’s USA, Joe Erlinger, went so far as to publish an open letter pushing back on “viral social posts and poorly sourced reports that McDonald’s has raised prices significantly beyond inflationary rates.”
“For the past year, the burger giant has been dogged by viral anecdotes of surprisingly high prices at some specific franchises—a $17.59 Big Mac meal, $5.69 for hash browns, and so on.”
He denied, for example, online chatter that the average price of a Big Mac is up 100% since 2019; it’s up 21%, he said, pointing to economy-wide inflation pressures.
Still, that’s a notable increase, and this week—in a sign that McDonald’s is taking the gripes seriously—it rolled out a new limited time $5 meal deal (joining a number of fast-food competitors offering value promotions). In addition, the chain announced new promotions tied to its app, most notably a Free Fries Friday offer running through the end of the year.
Even this has been met with some skepticism:
On social media, Mickey D critics argue that the company only wants to lure in-app users to collect data, and perhaps eventually implement a surge pricing scheme.
This is largely speculation—McDonald’s declined to comment to Fast Company, but there’s certainly no evidence of concrete dynamic pricing plans …
