Many people believe it’s an astounding $18 after a post on X of McDonald’s menu prices at a rest stop in Connecticut went viral and made national headlines. (Narrator voice: It’s not.)
Now, almost a year after the post, a top McDonald’s executive wants to set the record straight. In a recent letter, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said $18 for a Big Mac combo was the “exception” and not the norm across all 13,700 restaurants in the country.
The average price of a Big Mac in the US was $4.39 in 2019,” Erlinger said in his recent letter. “Despite a global pandemic and historic rises in supply chain costs, wages and other inflationary pressures in the years that followed, the average cost is now $5.29. That’s an increase of 21% (not 100%),” he added.
That’s just it, as a business owner, some years may be good, and some years may be bad.
So some years your profit should be less.
That doesn’t mean you’re going under. Less profit is still profit. That means everyone (including yourself) has been paid and you have money left over.
But because CEOs are paid mostly in stock, the profits have to rise every year, for no necessary reason besides “I like money”
And eventually that’ll break, and it’ll happen all at once.