McDonald's push to have AI price your Big Mac

HarHarVeryFunny

Soon you'll need to bring your own agent to negotiate the price of your Big Mac. Or you could just go somewhere with better food, better prices, and no AI.

ndiddy

If we're already seeing dynamic burger pricing based on market rates, does McDonald's also plan on offering a burger derivative market so customers can hedge their pricing risk in case unforeseen events cause the burger price to skyrocket?

tecoholic

There was a Jon Stewart podcast on this a couple of weeks ago on Machine Learning and custom pricing. It was an illuminating one. It all looks like a lead up to big consumer action and lawsuit in the future. TBH, McDonald’s pricing might survive as it seems to charge the same for everyone at the same store.

SMAAART

> One pricing factor supercharged by AI: an estimate of how much each store’s patrons are willing to pay. How is this any different from businesses who do not have transparent pricing? E.g.: Enterprise SaaS; consultancy; architectural materials.

throwaway63467

Why are people upset, it’s obviously “stupid” for customers but Amazon has been doing this for ages, prices change multiple times per day and the only reason is that they choose the optimal price point where you will just so buy at Amazon and not elsewhere, AI is surely involved in that process. People are fine with it apparently as Amazon grows like crazy, so why not pay dynamic rates for our burgers too, why not for everything? There are only so many ways for companies to grow 10-20 % per year forever, expect a lot more craziness as many of them reach global market penetration where regular growth mechanisms get exhausted.

kardos

The only winning move is not to play

AuthAuth

why does this never result in the food getting cheaper.

grogers

Maybe instead of spending money on AI to squeeze as much profit as possible you could just fix your self ordering kiosks to not suck? They are painfully slow to the point where you have to click things multiple times because it doesn't register and then when it does wake up it registers the second click on some unrelated thing that you have to undo. Plus half the time the card reader doesn't work so you have to pay at the counter anyways, which they don't staff so it takes forever to flag someone down.

UltraSane

I will never give McDonald's money after they let Trump use McDonald's to mock Kamala Harris for working at McDonald's. And the food is terrible value for money.

fny

I often wonder if it's possible to organize to have people collude to refuse any price above breakeven.