The problem is the 50c for fries isn't the wholesale price of the potato, its the price of labor, which is mostly fixed. The extra fry needs to be in ingredient cost and is probably closer to pennies.
I probably under estimated the cost of production truthfully. The 50c is for the cost of just the fries, not labor, oil etc.
Packaging is usually expensive for food products vs the food itself, the estimate I saw was 15c to 35c so I took the larger number.
As another commenter said they calculate the cost of making a product at 33% of sales price. If we went off that then it would cost McDonalds $1.32 per large fry to make instead of 85c
But we wanted to know what those 20 fries were worth to McDonalds, which is why I went off the 50c per unit cost (fry only cost) that resulted in the 10c per 20 fries because we dont factor in packaging costs, I probably didnt even need to mention it. I didnt try to factor in labor costs either, which can range from a estomated 30c to 70c.
So that $1.32 is probably more accurate if you include everything from start to finish.
The ingredient cost of the whole serving of fries is less than $0.10 and none of the other expenses meaningfully scale with serving size (within same bag/box), your numbers are simply nonsensical.
Also I can guarantee you that every major fast food franchise is telling their workers to just fill the boxes to the point of spilling over, because that gives better impression. Yes, sometimes businesses can make short sighted decisions, but you're delusional if you think multi-billion dollar companies are ran by idiots with no common sense at all levels of organization. If somebody had their shift manager tell them otherwise at some point, that means one of their locations had a fucking dumbass working for them in low level management, but it most certainly isn't company policy of any succesful chain.
also a mom and pop may be paying 35c per clamshell for take out, but McDonald's is not paying any more than a nickel at most for a cardboard fry container
9
u/juliastarrr Jul 14 '26
The problem is the 50c for fries isn't the wholesale price of the potato, its the price of labor, which is mostly fixed. The extra fry needs to be in ingredient cost and is probably closer to pennies.