Starting today, McDonald’s U.S. customers will finally have access to the newest McValue platform, an updated menu that the burger chain has touted as offering more flexibility and better deals.
Don’t be surprised if your next trip to the drive-thru isn’t meaningfully cheaper as a result.
Announced earlier this month, the new menu offers an array of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items for under $3. While that’s an attractive price point to be sure, it’s not quite as attractive to some customers as what was on offer with the original McValue menu when it was introduced last year.
That menu, you might recall, allowed customers to add various items for just $1 if they purchased a full-priced item of equal or lesser value. With the updated version, McDonald’s is doing away with the buy-one, add-one for $1 option—much to the chagrin of customers who adored it.
So in the end, the price difference between the two menus will depend on how you prefer to mix and match your burgers, chicken nuggets, and fries. Whereas you used to get a second item for $1, now you get one item for under $3.
Cheaper? Maybe, or maybe not. Experts say the true value of promotional menus is often determined by a range of factors, including location. McDonald’s pricing can vary greatly, even at restaurants within the same market.
In fact, depending on where you live, some items that are now part of the new under $3 deals may have already been available at that price point, according to fourth-quarter data from Technomic, which tracks menu prices.
“McDonald’s is always experimenting with the architecture of their value offerings,” Heather Nelson, senior director of syndicated research at Technomic, told Fast Company. “As a marketing tactic, this is designed to draw more attention to the value they were providing.”
Asked about how the new McValue menu might save customers money versus the previous iteration, a spokesperson for McDonald’s said the refreshed version better reflects the flexibility that customers prefer.
“The Under $3 Menu delivers on what [customers have] told us matters most: consistently great prices on their favorite items and the freedom to order what they want, when they want – no bundling required,” the spokesperson said. “Alongside other everyday value offerings like Meal Deals, customers now have more options to choose from – whether they’re looking for a quick snack or a complete meal.”
Still, the menu change has been a topic of robust discussion on forums like Reddit, where many customers are lamenting the loss of the buy-one, add-one offers.
On one extensive thread in the r/fastfood subreddit, some said the new menu’s math will leave them worse off at their own local McDonald’s. However, others in that same thread have countered that the under $3 will work out better for them.
The new McValue menu also retains the $5 Meal Deal that McDonald’s announced to much fanfare in 2024, when inflation-driven menu price hikes had become front page news. But notably, the McDouble version of that deal is now priced at $6, which many markets had already been charging due to higher operating costs.
On menus and marketing
In the world of fast food, menus are marketing, and good marketing relies on the promise of newness.
As the industry leader, McDonald’s extensively researches the impact of its menu pricing on consumer behavior, meaning however you feel about its new price promotions, it doesn’t arrive at them by accident.
But the basic rule of upward pressure means that some of its catchiest promotions have had to go extinct by necessity. That’s not just true for McDonald’s, but for all fast food brands.
Consider the long-defunct Dollar Menu, a concept so alluring that it still holds sway in certain nostalgic circles.
As that price point became untenable, McDonald’s in 2013 reimagined the idea as the Dollar Menu & More, pitching it as at the time as offering “more choices.” A few years later, it came out with the $1 $2 $3 Dollar Menu, again offering all of its beloved staples, but now at an even wider range of tiers.
That menu, too, eventually went by the wayside, and the burger giant has more recently emphasized the value of its $5 (or maybe $6) Meal Deals.
Dressing up the same food with different pricing schemes every few years might remind one of that old adage about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, except McDonald’s is hardly sinking. Its restaurants generated $139 billion in global sales last year.
This is in no small part due to the perception of affordability that McDonald’s has perfected over the decades.
But these days, the country is in the throes of a full-blown affordability crisis. As a brand built on value, McDonald’s has had to put even more focus on its “core customer” in the lower- and middle-income class categories, according to Darren Tristano, CEO FoodserviceResults, a consulting firm.
“Sometimes these ‘deals’ are nothing more than a small discount or focusing a spotlight on already lower-cost menu products,” Tristano says. “McDonald’s likely adds items with lower costs so operating profits don’t take a big hit.”
Kristin Toussaint contributed reporting.