One thing that the economy is stimulating is the desire for restaurants to capture whatever money you are willing to spend on outside food. As food prices increase and people start to panic, there is less eating out. Even typical college or high school kids, who tend to be fast food’s biggest customers, are spending their money to fuel their cars instead of their bodies.
In response to all of this, many fast food places are responding with more value not less. If they can present a greater amount of food for less money, they believe, the customers will come.
The main way they are enticing customers, with what has been deemed the “fast food recession menu” by many, is by including more premium choices in their dollar menus. You should spot now or in the near future, plenty of double cheeseburgers and larger fries, for example. Some chains, such as Burger King, are testing out their premium choices in just a few discrete markets, while others, such as Wendy’s are planning to make the new value offerings global.
While I am a big advocate of cooking from scratch for the nutrition and the dollar savings, I do realize that there are a few (only a few) cases where cooking from scratch isn’t always practical. For example, when my eldest was a baby and in the hospital and we hadn’t eaten in the past 6 hours, the nearby McDonalds was the only thing open at midnight.
I wouldn’t expect that value deals to last too long. After all, beef, cheese and bread, staples of the fast food options, are all increasing in cost. In fact, these staples, instead of steadily increasing, are repeatedly spiking up in price like jumping beans. At some point, the money lost by these fast food restaurants will be too overwhelmed for the strategy to continue. Combine these dollar menu deals with coupons from the Sunday paper for the best fast food value.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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