Thread

1. walrus01 · 1790901508 · focus · HN ↗

   Breaking news, big mac might cost more in midtown manhattan than in topeka kansas, film at 11.

   <snore>

   1. loufe · 1790901670 · focus · HN ↗

      This is a poor take and reads like a strawman. The post is mentioning locations 2 miles from one another varying by almost $2USD for the same product.

      1. walrus01 · 1790901826 · focus · HN ↗

         Individual franchise fast food restaurants in the same city can be owned by two totally different groups of people and have very different cost structures for the real estate acquisition cost and build cost, and very different debt loads.

         McDonalds restaurants are required to conform to a monolithic corporate identity as part of their franchise agreement but many are individually owned.

         I'm not trying to excuse dynamic algorithm based pricing (and personal opinion, McD is crap ultraprocessed pseudo-food), but I'm pretty sure there's a $2 difference between the price of two totally unrelated shawarma vendors for approximately the same product that are within 800 meters of each other in my city as well.

         1. bdangubic · 1790903362 · focus · HN ↗

            except you are trying to excuse it

            1. walrus01 · 1790903529 · focus · HN ↗

               No, I'm describing a documented fact of why specifically McDonalds has different pricing in different locations. It has been that way since basically forever. They are individually owned by franchisees and within a certain range do set different pricing in different retail premises. I don't like McDonalds but it's also very ignorant that people are treating this like it's something new.

               Next I'm sure some people will discover and be shocked by the fact that the non-corporate-run starbucks kiosks in some major international airports (run by an airport catering/specialist service company) have different prices than their corporate-run local starbucks.

               Now if the topic is, as someone else has described in other linked threads on the same topic that different people using the app are getting different pricing for the same store, that's new to me and certainly something to be concerned about. It sounds like what airline ticket booking/purchase sites are known to do depending on your cookies, IP, useragent, browser fingerprint, etc. Very slimy.

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