McDonald’s Fights Back Against the $18 Big Mac Meal

A McDonald’s executive’s open letter about price increases forcefully staked out the company’s position even if it did little to cool the simmering debate about how much it charges for Big Macs and Quarter Pounders.

Expressing the company’s frustration, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, responded to “viral social posts and poorly sourced reports” about price hikes. If you hadn’t heard before about the $18 Big Mac Meal—at an Interstate service plaza in Connecticut in 2023—you probably did after May 29, 2024, when Erlinger’s letter was published. It was national news.

With $25.49 billion in revenue in 2023, the Chicago-based company is a marketing and public relations heavyweight. Last year, CEO Chris Kempczinski’s speech on what ails Chicago set the stage for the incumbent mayor’s defeat. That makes a letter like Erlinger’s worth studying by other communicators.

The company’s media relations team opened but did not respond to emails with detailed questions about the letter, according to an email monitoring tool. Here’s five key issues that Erlinger’s letter raises:

1. What is it? The nearly 550-word letter is part press release, part thought leadership. Like a release, the accompanying graphics package offers detailed, favorable historical price comparisons of popular menu items.

Yet it’s more personal than a release. It’s from a top executive and starts with an anecdote from his childhood. The piece is too self-serving to qualify strictly speaking as thought leadership, which is a demonstration of knowledge and skill.

On the other hand, who has more expertise on McDonald’s prices than Erlinger? He joined the company in 2002 and was made head of its U.S. operations in 2019.

McDonald’s approach likely created more news media pickup than if the company had chosen one format or the other.

2. How to start. The anecdotal lede is true to the thought leadership format. The goal is to personalize the issue.

Erlinger, who is 50, according to Morningstar, mentions his excitement as a kid when his parents took him to McDonald’s.

That would be a great opening to a letter about Happy Meals, but this letter is about price hikes.

He tries to patch up this disconnect by saying he realized years later that his parents could count on the fast-food chain for a “convenient, affordable meal for the whole family.”

Perhaps Erlinger’s family wasn’t one of those who, in his words, today “are making tough calls about where to spend their hard-earned money.” Should the piece have started with a couple stories about serving current customers struggling to make ends meet? Or would that have rung hollow?

That was a key choice Erlinger and his comms team made.

3. Use your data. Erlinger backs up his claims with graphics that compare 2019 and 2024 average prices for items, including the Egg McMuffin, Filet-O-Fish and 10-piece McNuggets Meal.

Thought leadership is a terrific opportunity to use a company’s statistics. In a praiseworthy moment of candor, the company even tucked into the presentation that the average price of menu items is up about 40% since 2019, a disclosure that reporters quickly seized upon.

Some headlines were neutral, such as ABC News’ report on May 30, 2024: McDonald’s sets the numbers straight on exaggerated prices on social media. Other headlines weren’t as friendly, such as this one by CNN on May 29, 2024: McDonald’s: Our prices haven’t risen as much as you think.

Whether McDonald’s disclosure won the argument will likely be closely analyzed by the company’s comms team.

4. Empathy for the customers. While McDonald’s execs say prices haven’t risen as much as some claim, they have risen more than low-income customers can afford.

“Where you see the pressure with the U.S. consumer is that low-income consumer,” Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said during a conference call on Feb. 5, 2024, to discuss the company’s fourth quarter’s earnings. “So call it, $45,000 and under. That consumer is pressured. From an industry standpoint, we actually saw that cohort decrease in the most recent quarter, particularly I think as eating at home has become more affordable…. If you think about middle income, high income, we’re not seeing any real change in behavior with those.”

McDonald’s executives should be saddened that, despite their efforts, their food is too expensive for a key group of customers. But there isn’t a hint of regret in the letter.

Instead, Erlinger blames the pandemic, rising wages, knotted supply chains and franchisees who set the prices at nearly all U.S. locations. And then there’s “people” who believe the $18 Big Mac meal “is the rule and not the exception” and “folks” who say the price of a Big Mac has doubled since 2019.

“For Joe Erlinger to push back on consumers comes across as a bit tone deaf,” Jerry Sheldon, vice president of technology at the market research firm IHL Group, told business news site Quartz.

Unquestionably, the coverage of the letter demonstrated McDonald’s power with the news media and the intensity of the interest in inflation. What will tell us if that changes the debate?

Time.

Tom Corfman, a senior consultant with Ragan Consulting Group, favors the Filet-O-Fish. 

Contact our client team to learn more about how we can help you with your communications. Follow RCG on LinkedIn and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.