You want my left arm, too, Mickey D?

/ July 2, 2015

So I thought I’d be a little healthier than usual that morning last week, on a dead run trying to squeeze some sort of breakfast in between blogging and my vanity appointment and viewing a matinée showing of Ted 2 and blogging some more.

I pulled the Chevy Cruze into the inside lane of the McDonald’s drive through — yeah, the one on Route 11 in North Syracuse is busy enough to earn the double dip — and ordered the original, the Canadian bacon covered Egg McMuffin, to go with my large unsweetened iced tea.

My usual is the Sausage McMuffin with Egg. If I’m going home to deal with its potential drippiness in a stationary setting, my next favorite is the Breakfast Burrito, with either the hot or mild sauce, depending on how spicy I’m feeling.

But this day I thought the thinly sliced ham would do my system better than the fattier sausage as I sat through my haircut and beard trim and then the comedy with Mark Wahlberg and the voice of Seth MacFarlane in a teddy bear.

Say what?

Say what?

The voice out of the speaker told me to hand over $4.85 at the first window.

More than I expected by more than a buck.

So when I got there, I politely asked if they no longer had the Twofer deal. As in, Two for Three Bucks.

Yes, they still have it, I was told, but it’s now two for $3.33, and it’s always only been good for the Sausage McMuffin and Egg and the beverage.

OK. So then I asked if the large unsweetened iced tea was no longer just a buck.

Sure, it is, she said.

How much is an Egg McMuffin, I asked.

Wow. A thinly sliced piece of ham and one egg on an english muffin at McDonald’s is now $3.49.

I know I’m old, but … You’re still freaking McDonald’s!

Thank you for listening.

What do you think an Egg McMuffin should cost? What’s the last pull-through breakfast you ate on the run, and how much did it cost? What do you have to grump about lately?

Related posts

97 thoughts on “You want my left arm, too, Mickey D?”

  1. Try buying a dinner meal there for close to NINE dollars! That’s more than one of their employees makes in an hour, and it’s not even always hot and fresh when you get it. (Which is why I now boycott McDonalds for the past 5 years or so.)

    Like

    Reply

  2. I am a fan if their $1 drinks, including their iced medium coffee with caramel flavoring, their grilled chicken sandwich on a partially whole wheat bun and their Mexican salad with black beans, corn, tortilla chips, Paul Newman’s Own vinaigrette with squeezed lime juice over grilled chicken. That is about all except I do occasionally get the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit ” meal” with hash brown patty and $1 iced coffee with caramel. This comes to under $5. I am sorry you found prices high and food not well prepared or “worth the cost.”

    Like

    Reply

    • Your orders sound worth the price, Robin. I was just grouchy comparing the higher-price of the Egg McMuffin compared to what I usually got the Sausage McMuffin for a part of the two-fer deal. 😦

      Like

      Reply

  3. Hey! My new car is a Cruze, too! 🙂
    These things vary in different locations, I know. I once paid $7 something for a Big Mac in Aspen, Colorado, lol! I think it was $1 something at home. Anyway, I don’t know what I would pay for a McMuffin, maybe $2? I rarely eat brekkie at McD’s, but I like the sausage biscuit thingy, and I think it’s a dollar. No, I probably wouldn’t pay 3!
    You know what bothers me? How I can go to a gas station and get some enormous fountain soda for 79cents and a bottle half its size is $1.79? Gah.

    Like

    Reply

    • Yeah, the fountain/bottled gap of life is a pisser, Joey. That just ain’t right. Bottled water prices, too, when tap is FREE! I’m so cheap I always drink tap, unless I see something floating in it at another table, you know?

      Do you love your Cruze so far? Mine just turned 4, and it’s give me zero trouble, knock on wood. I’ve kept to the maintenance timetable, knock on wood my end. 😉 Drive it in health and happiness, my friend.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • I drink tap, too. In fact, I complained about bottled water on our vacation, and was relieved to drink tap water at various homes. I guess some people like that flavorless vacuum of bottled water, but I prefer tasting minerals. I feel like tap or actual spring water is much healthier for us. (Also, plastic…not too sure…)
        Yeah, I love my Cruze so far! I very much enjoy having my own car again, let alone a nice new one! 😀 Glad to hear yours has kept up its end of the deal!

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Egg McMuffin? They’d have to pay me…but for you, $1.49 seems like a good max, considering that the egg costs roughly .11, an English muffin maybe .15 and the bacon maybe .24 (retail prices for all–I’m guessing McDonalds buys ’em in bulk). So, .50 for ingredients and .12 (pro-rated) for the minimum wage employee to hover over your delicacy (yeh, right) for 2 minutes, (assuming s/he can produce two sandwiches at a time) leaves .88–we’ll credit .03 for packaging. A good restaurant clears 20%–that’s .30 off the 1.49, so even then that leaves .55 for overhead like utilities, real estate, and the special Pennzoil bar and chain oil they use as a lubricant on the grill. Yep, $1.49 is good.

    Like

    Reply

  6. I can eat a much more filling meal at their competitors (And that’s saying something, I’m a growing squirrel after all). I haven’t regularly patronized Mickey Dee’s in several years for exactly that reason, cost. It started when they decided to go all upscale last decade. No, McDonalds, you are not an upscale eating establishment. I swear they are only getting by on brand name recognition and market saturation these days, and even that won’t last for very long if they don’t wake up and get back to their cheaper roots…

    Like

    Reply

  7. My heart bleeds, Mark.

    My gripe is that there is no fast food of which I am aware that is safe for me to eat. No gluten, so no pancakes, fast-food oatmeal, no buns, and nothing fried (because gluten coatings are fried in the same oil). No corn, so no tortillas or chips. No maltodextrin, so no chicken (in the U.S., we pump our chicken full of it). No plain hamburgers, because even if you ask that it not touch a bun first, it does (sadly, they lie), and one gets very sick. I don’t eat pork.

    To take a road trip, one must be willing to live on apples, bananas, canned tuna, GF oatmeal hauled from home, and rare salads (can’t eat those too often without illness). Gets old real fast. (The only GF bread which has no corn products or maltodextrin is from Trader Joe’s, and can you believe they don’t have a store at every rest stop across the country!?)

    Like

    Reply

  8. I think getting any meal for under $5 is good. But then again, I live in a very overpriced area and am used to paying too much for everything. Except gas.
    That sandwich sounds good. Yum.

    Like

    Reply

  9. If you ever come to Canada, brace yourself Mark, I’m pretty sure nothing is $3-something here, even at McDonald’s! ❤
    Diana xo
    ps. I love that they call it Canadian bacon there. 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  11. i’d go for the dollar price tag on each of those items and anything more seems out of synch with fast cheap food. my junkfood weakness is taco bell, with many things found on their value menu. kind of a double edged sword )

    Like

    Reply

  12. An egg McMuffin costs somewhere around Rupees 80 here. That should be some 1.4 dollars? I’m making a rough guess. But McDonald’s is steadily raising it’s prices. They make you love a burger at a low price, and then raise it’s price.

    Like

    Reply

  14. I’m studying too much microbiology to think about food sensibly. All I can think of is the pathogens. The Twofer deal seems like a good option though?

    For some reason, for many years I’ve been looking at food through a “Calories per dollar” lens. Probably started when I was a high schooler with little money and a lot of calorie requirements. I don’t use that scale much anymore, but perhaps the expensive egg mcmuffin still passes the “enough calories per dollar” test. Maybe?

    Like

    Reply

    • Yes, pathogen studier, a Sausage McMuffin and large unsweetened Iced Tea for $3.33 is a fine breakfast deal. It probably would rank highly on your calorie-per-buck list as well. What sport were you bulking up to play, King Dave? Boxing weight class?

      Like

      Reply

      • Honestly, there wasn’t really a sport I was bulking up for, as much as I was cheap and wanted to not go hungry but also not spend a lot of cash. These days I’m trying to make the middleweight (160) or super middleweight (168) limit, but that will only work with extensive dehydration techniques!

        Like

  15. It will probably cost you $7 if you buy it at an airport Archway Club. Can you imagine the what it will cost when President Zero mandates we pay the minimally talented $15/hour?

    Like

    Reply

  16. Haven’t been to McDonalds in years. Here is what I have to grump about. My kids are out of school, so I send them out for lunch. That way I don’t buy a crap load of food for the house and it sits in the fridge waiting to be thrown out the following Sunday, to make room for the new groceries. So I came home yesterday and found a receipt on the counter for their lunch. They went to Wassabi and spent $74.61. What the heck? I said to them, don’t you think almost $75.00 for lunch for 2 of you is a bit excessive? Here is the troubling thing. They were confused and slightly irritated that I should even think this was an issue. My one son ate a sushi roll that cost $24.00. along with two other less expensive rolls. No wonder I am so stinking broke.

    Like

    Reply

    • That is a most excellent rant, S.D. Kids these days! You have to set a meal-cost limit, obviously, and go ahead and let them gripe. Have a great holiday weekend, if you can afford to rub two dimes together, my friend. 😉

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Same to you. Have tried the limiting setting. Think I might start working on strictly cash basis now, give them $40 and that’s it. Did that the other day and they told me they BARELY had enough for lunch. Thank goodness blogging is free, because that is about all I can afford to do. You have a good weekend too!! I will be sitting on my patio while the boys get to do stay in some huge mansion in Lake Tahoe with their friend’s family and do fun things.

        Like

  17. Rarely do I ever go to McDonalds, but my son and I just enjoyed a 2 for 3 deal about a month ago during a road trip. Prices, unfortunately, are going up everywhere. Time to grow our own gardens. 🙂

    Like

    Reply

  20. I can certainly empathize Mark. I live on a fixed income and I have found more and more of the type of pricing you pointed out. It is rampant. It seem to be that there is a premium put on choice-you can always get what you want but it comes at a steep price. The alternative is to take what they wish to offer at a lower price. I grocery shop that way now as it is so much more cost effective. For instance most loaves of bread are $3.00-$4.00 apiece locally. I walked into the supermarket the other day and they had one brand on for $1.00 a loaf – fresh white bread. Guess what I bought? Instant coffee is typically $5.99-$7.99 a jar – except there is a perfectly good store brand for $3.99. And so on.

    In a way it is predatory pricing – they are charging you for choice, not as a function of cost. They used to put certain products on special for flyers and ad campaigns. Now the regular pricing is widely spread for similar products. And computers allow them to change product prices at the drop of a hat. In fact, there is one store that has a big BBQ chicken on special after 3 pm (till 9 pm) on Tuesdays – about 40% less than regular price. Scan it at 2:59 pm and it is $11.99, scan it at 3:01 pm and the price is $7.49.

    I have found that following the whims of the retailers is very cost effective as long as you are flexible. For those who want something specific in this busy world – they are more than happy to sell it to you at twice the price – and smile while they do it.

    Interesting post Mark – and definitely the new direction in pricing.

    Like

    Reply

    • In a supermarket, I usually go with the lesser-priced store brand as well, Paul, unless it proves itself inferior and forces me to switch back to something pricier. And, yes, shopping for the best price weekly and even daily by place and time is now part of our lives, thanks to technology. An advance? Depends on the way you look at it, right?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  21. It’s hard if you’re on the run, but I have a go-to egg sandwich. Takes 3 minutes. Costs about 30 cents. Pack in foil for the road. ☺

    Fried egg, over hard. Light squirt of mustard. Top with white cheese. Cover with foil or small pot lid to melt cheese. Serve on any bread. (p.s. Trust me on the yellow mustard…it makes a difference)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      • I use both ketchup and mustard in my life, Rose, depending upon the situation. Usually neither on the eggs. Sometimes salsa or hot sauce, but I’m more willing to give mustard a go than ketchup because I hate it when a bit of ketchup from home fries wanders from the over-medium. Eeeeew.

        Like

      • I can see your viewpoint. I’ve been putting ketchup on my eggs since I was a kid but I try not to do it at the table, it makes hubby queasy.

        Hot dog, I like both, unless I”m having kraut then it’s got to be mustard all the way- and onions.

        I’m hungry now! going to make some eggs

        Like

      • My husband is from Pittsburgh, they put ketchup on everything, I think.. home to Heinz, maybe some influence there ?? I was surprised the first time he assaulted a hot dog, he couldn’t believe I put mustard on a soft pretzel. The debate continues….☺

        Like

      • I definitely put mustard on hot dogs and ham an pastrami and soft pretzels, Van.

        Ketchup on burgers and fries and, sometimes, even steak (yup).

        Horseradish on kielbasa.

        Mayo on white stuff.

        Not that you asked, mind you, but what the hey, it’s my blog, I think. 😉

        Liked by 1 person

      • I love mustard on a pretzel. I learned to do that the 2 years I was in NY. I tried it once here and they looked at me like I had 2 heads!

        Liked by 1 person

  22. I broke up with Mcdonald’s a few years ago when their meat and muffins got smaller. Now and then if I am on the run I get a sausage biscuit.

    We buy a package of English muffins or tortillas and eggs and make our own. I just can’t give them that other arm.

    Like

    Reply

  24. Well the best thing I can say about the Golden Arches is they used to have good marketing. I mean Egg McMuffin. Isn’t that a great name? I must admit I occasionally will eat one of their McDoublers. Granted they are an affront anything culinary but there is something addictive about them.

    Like

    Reply

  26. Can I grump about the fact that my household had a plumbing issue, aircon replacement, and clothes dryer replacement all in one week? No pull-through breakfasts lately, and especially would not be at Maccas (as the big M is affectionately known here!) do you know Aussie Maccas randomly offers burgers with a beetroot option?

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.