The price of a McDonald’s McChicken sandwich in June 2024 was $4.89.
On June 10, 2024, the conservative group Media Analysis Heart (MRC) posted (archived) a picture on Fb. The picture displayed a McDonald’s McChicken sandwich with an “end-of-2019 worth” of $1.29 and a “mid-2024 worth” of $4.89, together with a calculated enhance of 279.1 %. The MRC put up caption referenced U.S. President Joe Biden, studying, “Thanks, Joe.” A repost (archived) of the picture on June 12 displayed the caption, “Relaxation in Peace to the times when quick meals was reasonably priced.” Different customers also reposted the picture on X.
The pricing info in MRC’s picture referenced worldwide inflation in recent times, or extra particularly the rising prices within the U.S. fast-food trade. Concerning this topic, The Associated Press revealed on Could 29, “McDonald’s stated the typical worth of all menu gadgets has risen 40 % over the past 5 years, to account for a 40 % common enhance in the price of labor, paper and meals. That’s greater than general client costs, which have elevated 21 % since December 2019, in line with authorities figures.”
The purported “mid-2024 worth” of $4.89 was the first declare within the picture, in line with customers’ interpretations of the put up mirrored of their feedback, the very fact MRC posted the picture on Fb in June 2024, and the yellow, highlighted background behind the greenback determine. One commenter wrote of the picture, “I do not eat McDonald’s. Nevertheless, it does have a tendency to point out how effectively Biden’s Construct Again Higher is working.”
On June 13, Snopes performed analysis to search out the reality on the middle of the piece of media posted by MRC. Whereas a wealth of information about 2019 pricing was not available, we had been capable of conclude the MRC put up’s main declare in regards to the “mid-2024 worth” of a McChicken was false. Our knowledge is introduced under, together with tough estimates for the national-average price and the typical price of a McDonald’s McChicken sandwich in California.
We emailed MRC on June 13 asking if it deliberate to appropriate or retract the false Fb posts. On the next day, a spokesperson for MRC responded to our inquiry. That response seems later on this story.
Error in MRC’s Quotation of FastFoodMenuPrices.com
With none seen context within the MRC put up’s picture, the picture appeared to reference U.S. nationwide common costs for the McDonald’s McChicken sandwich. The marginally seen quotation displayed on the backside of the picture learn, “Supply: fastfoodmenuprices.com (As of Finish of Could 2024).”
A go to to fastfoodmenuprices.com/mcdonalds-prices/ (archived) – the supply displayed on the backside of the picture – confirmed info explaining that the FastFoodMenuPrices.com writer sourced the $4.89 worth reposted by MRC from a single McDonald’s restaurant at 904 Manhattan Ave. within the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Additionally, the FastFoodMenuPrices.com writer listed the lone restaurant’s worth as “for 2023,” not for the “finish of Could 2024” as MRC claimed. FastFoodMenuPrices.com added on its web site, “Understand that costs range rather a lot relying on the place you might be, and also you may not pay what we paid.” This assertion was absent from MRC’s picture.
Setting the entire MRC put up’s discrepancies apart, a fast and easy test of the publicly accessible McDonald’s cellular app for the June 2024 worth on the similar Brooklyn McDonald’s location displayed $3.49 for a McChicken – a worth far wanting the $4.89 MRC revealed to its followers.
The June 2024 price of the particular Brooklyn McDonald’s restaurant cited within the knowledge was $3.49, not $4.89.
Tough Common for US McChicken Value
We continued to make use of the McDonald’s cellular app with a view to land on a tough nationwide common price for the McDonald’s McChicken sandwich. For our analysis, we manually cycled by way of a whole lot of the corporate’s eating places within the app to compile a sampling of pricing knowledge.
In our first research, we randomly chosen three McDonald’s eating places from every of the 50 U.S. states. The results of the 150-restaurant research was a tough nationwide common of $2.79 for a McChicken – as soon as once more, a worth nowhere close to $4.89.
Extra Knowledge for California
In keeping with the ScrapeHero website, as of March 12, 2024, there have been 13,529 McDonalds eating places in the US. “The state and territory with essentially the most variety of McDonalds areas within the U.S. is California, with 1,221 eating places, which is about 9 % of all McDonald’s eating places within the U.S.,” Scrapehero reported. (Alternatively, McDonalds.com revealed in March 2023, “California is house to just about 1,300 McDonald’s eating places.”)
In gentle of this knowledge – in addition to the California $20 minimum wage hike affecting McDonald’s and different fast-food firms – we collected pricing info for 50 further, randomly chosen McDonald’s eating places in California. In keeping with the info collected solely from that sampling of fifty California areas, the tough common state price of a McChicken was $3.35. This price was greater than our research’s tough nationwide common of $2.79 however nonetheless not near $4.89.
We additionally calculated the typical of all 200 McDonald’s areas for which we compiled knowledge. These 200 areas included three areas for every of 49 U.S. states (excluding California) and 53 areas for California eating places. This calculation maybe added too many areas for California in comparison with the state’s smaller-percentage slice into the nationwide make-up of the corporate. Even so, that tough common of 200 complete McDonald’s areas calculated $2.93 for a McChicken. All of our knowledge is obtainable for viewing in a two-tab spreadsheet through Google Sheets.
MRC Response to Snopes
On June 14, MRC Communications Director Iris Miller responded to our e-mail inquiry from the day past. Miller wrote, “After additional evaluate, our crew realized the cited web site says up to date 2024 however the McChicken particularly says 2023. We have added a correction to our put up and shall be making new graphics for future posts. Sadly, Fb not allows you to swap out the image so we can not appropriate that with out deleting. We used this web site since they’ve previous and current (or latest) numbers. As you realize, costs can range broadly relying on location.”
Nevertheless, once more, as evidenced by the analysis introduced on this fact-check article, MRC’s picture about McChicken costs concerned much more than a easy mix-up involving the yr.
For additional studying, we beforehand seemed into different McDonald’s rumors claiming the corporate planned to leave California entirely and that McNuggets are made with silicone oil.
