Been thinking about how wild the fast food pricing got over the past couple years. Remember when chains were all racing to drop those meals under $5? That whole thing started with McDonald's dropping their combo deal back in 2024, and honestly it felt like a turning point when they actually acknowledged people were getting squeezed financially.

The crazy part is restaurant prices had already jumped like 25% since 2020, so when fast food started hitting the same price points as sit-down places, people just stopped going. That's when you saw all the major chains suddenly competing hard on value - Wendy's, Burger King, Jack in the Box, KFC, Taco Bell, everyone jumped in with their own meals under $5 or close to it. McDonald's was pushing their McChicken and McDouble combos, Burger King had the Your Way Meal with options, Taco Bell went slightly over at $7 but packed it with stuff.

What's interesting looking back is how it actually worked for consumers. Like, if you were smart about it, you could get a legit meal for cheap instead of dropping $15-20 on fast food like before. But it also showed how desperate these chains were getting - they needed the lower-income customer traffic back badly enough to basically race to the bottom on prices.

Some people were hitting these deals hard, tens of millions according to McDonald's at the time. Others were just like, why am I paying anything for fast food when I could cook at home? Either way, it was this weird moment where the entire fast food industry basically admitted inflation had broken their usual pricing model.

Tbh the whole value meal trend was both good and kind of sad - good for your wallet if you needed cheap fast food, but it also showed how much the economy was squeezing regular people that chains had to get this aggressive with deals just to keep customers coming back.