moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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The Fast Food Thread
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Lanx
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Furry
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That 'not actually smaller' is lying by statistics. 2/3s the carbs and lots of extra fat means they made it way more compact. They probably substituted some of the beef and bun with more processed cheese or extra mayo, whichever was cheaper, and just outright lowered the beef quality.
This 100% confirms severe shrinkflation is underway.
Furry
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I have a green list of places I'll go. I probably eat something fast food once a month. I'm much more into eating random crap at the grocery store. McDonalds for me is that once every few months I crave the mcdonalds beef chemicals. I usually just get a double cheeseburger and no fries or drink. Hits the craving and its like 3$.
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Fogel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Only fast food I get right now is the occasional Chik Fil A and Captain D's has a 2 piece fish and fries for 6 bucks and the fish pieces are huge so they aren't skimping out there. Once in awhile I'm forced to go to McD's for my nugget fix, but that's all I'll ever get from there.
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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You keep acting like acknowledging context is the same as "defending drug use." No one said substances aren't a factor. What's being challenged is your insistence on treating downstream labor symptoms as if they're the engine driving declines in food quality.
Your argument works like this - 20% of workers are impaired -> impaired people don't care -> therefore restaurants are bad now. But that's not an analysis, that's feels-based causality (liberals do this, btw).
If worker quality were the primary determinant of food quality, we'd expect chains with sober, well-trained workers to serve better food (they don't - it still tastes like shit, costs way too much, has suffered from shrinkflation, etc.), chains in stricter labor markets to outperform others, and establishments with in-house prep to consistently excel. But the data, industry history, and even the examples you yourself cited all say the opposite - quality is tracking with supply chain decisions, not employee lifestyle choices.
Outback didn't decline because Chad on the grill hit a blunt. It declined when corporate leadership replaced in-house prep with centrally sourced product to protect margins. You keep circling back to drugs, old people, and lazy kids because those are morally convenient culprits. They let you feel like you've diagnosed something without having to understand how consolidation, logistics, and scaling incentives reshape entire industries. That's why Matt's video resonated with you, because it moralizes structural economics. That's precisely why he first starts with the "drugs" red herring and then throws in the "woke"/WOMEN! red herring toward the latter part of the video. It's easier to blame individuals than to understand systems. It's fascinating to watch how people supporting the "right" are just as easily captured by "moral outrage" as the left. Only instead of abortion, SNAP, etc. they capture you with illegal immigration, drugs, crime, etc.
As for the "keep eating the slop" line? I'm not defending the food, I'm explaining why it's slop. Your stance amounts to - "The ship is sinking because the deckhand doesn't row hard enough!". Meanwhile, the hull was sold off to private equity and replaced with cardboard. You're not wrong that workers can be a factor. You're wrong in thinking that factor is primary, causal, or fixable in isolation. You can fire every "druggie" tomorrow and nothing fundamentally changes until the inputs, incentives, and distribution networks do. That's not an excuse, that's the architecture of the industry.
Blaming workers feels satisfying. Understanding supply chains actually explains something.
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McCheese
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Grocery store has been my alternative, too. I can buy a full bag of those TGIFridays chips for $1.69 and any one of a huge variety of beverages for like $2 to $3. I can add on a meat stick if I want protein for another $2. That's more food for about half the price.
The only downside is I have to get out of my car but given I'm eating a whole bag of chips for breakfast the walking does me good.
zzeris
The Real Benny Johnson
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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You don't have to literally say something is "the engine" for your argument to rely on it functioning as a primary driver. When someone repeatedly returns to a factor, elevates it rhetorically, and uses it as the point of distinction between "then vs. now," they're not treating it as "incidental", they're positioning it as causal. The way you've framed drug use, generational attitudes, and worker indifference isn't just as a background condition. You've repeatedly positioned those things as the reason food quality has declined. That's why I pushed back. You're assigning cultural and behavioral explanations to an outcome that's far more directly tied to supply chain decisions, centralized prep, and cost-driven sourcing.
No one's denying substance abuse exists or that it creates challenges. The question is whether it meaningfully explains national menu homogenization, lower ingredient quality, or the outsourcing of food prep to massive distributors. If removing those workers tomorrow wouldn't reverse any of that, then it's not the causal lever you are framing it as. It's a contribution to a much larger picture, not the thing steering the ship.
If your point is simply that worker quality can affect execution at the margins, fine. Most people would agree with that. But when the inputs, sourcing, and prep are standardized at the corporate or distributor level, the ceiling on quality is already set long before the fry cook touches anything. That's why pushing the conversation toward cultural decay or personal responsibility feels like a distraction and falling for the red herring Matt offers up. It doesn't address the mechanisms that actually changed the industry.
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You know the fast food industry has jumped the shark when a guy named McCheese won’t visit the establishments.
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