How Much Does Your Favorite Fast Food Combo Cost In Cities Across The US?

An $18 McDonald’s Big Mac Meal recently made headlines as further evidence of the pains of inflation. I’ve seen all kinds of takes here, with people and publications blaming Joe Biden’s economic policies (it is an election year after all), or suggesting the fault is with fast food workers themselves for accepting their well-deserved wage increases. It’s a thorny issue and, truth be told, much of this is a simple market correction in an artificially deflated food system.*

Make no mistake, fast food prices are rising. But what a lot of these headlines and the online chatter seem to miss is that generally, a Big Mac Meal doesn’t cost the average consumer $18. To say otherwise is completely disingenuous. The $18 Big Mac that gets cited again and again in articles like the NY Post’s “Why McDonald’s is charging $18 for a Big Mac Meal — and why there’s no relief in sight,” is about a specific McDonald’s franchise restaurant at a rest stop in Darien, Connecticut — where a Big Mac meal will cost you $17.59 and an Egg McMuffin will run you $7.29.

This was at a rest stop, but these McDonald’s prices are nuts right??? pic.twitter.com/0qq8Ima3ZA

— Sam Learner (@sam_learner) July 18, 2023

That’s a lot of money, for sure. But when we’re talking about a specific franchise restaurant (franchisees set their own prices) located at a rest stop where prices are often grossly inflated (have you ever gotten gas between cities on a road trip? It’s nuts), this doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what the average American consumer faces. The truth is, that the Federal Reserve has done a pretty good job of bringing down inflation rates and dodging a full-blown economic recession. The United States Department of Agriculture says that food prices are decreasing at the grocery store and yes, increasing away from home (meaning fast food) but not nearly to the point that these reactionary publications would suggest.

McDonald’s knows its high prices are hurting business, recently its CEO Chris Kempczinski acknowledged the pressure its rising prices place on consumers making under $45,000 a year. So it’s up to McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants to figure out how to draw those customers back (Taco Bell is doing a pretty good job).

This conversation got us thinking — How much does an actual Big Mac Meal cost? Prices vary from city to city, so we rounded up the price of the Big Mac Meal and some of our other fast food favorites from five of the most populous cities across the United States to see how much damage eating out will cause to your finances. The five cities we chose were New York City, New York, Los Angeles California, Chicago Illinois, Atlanta Georgia, and Houston Texas.

The restaurants we chose were McDonald’s (obviously), Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s, simply because these are four of our favorite fast food restaurants and they’re located in each of the five cities. We focused specifically on combo meals (except Chipotle, which doesn’t have combos), and chose two or three popular orders. See the details below.

*We’ve been paying too little for fast food for decades. — you shouldn’t be able to raise a chicken, kill a chicken, portion a chicken, cook a chicken, bread a chicken, flash freeze a chicken, send a chicken across the country, unpack a chicken, fry a chicken, box it up with a toy and two sauces, and sell it for $3 — that’s insanity and it’s why chicken farms are so gross and unethical, etc.

McDonalds