We’re pro-fast food on Student Recipes, especially when there are great deals to be had. However, the old idea of fast food being good value, or even a cheap meal, isn’t always true.
The Week reported that many lower-income customers are now priced out of fast food. Not only are everyday bills stubbornly high, but so are the costs of running restaurants, and those costs are being passed on to the customer.
According to a McDonald’s company fact sheet, menu prices rose by roughly 40% from 2019 to 2024. Considering the cost increases in 2025, who knows what that 40% is now.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s, when a few crumpled singles could cover lunch with ease. Today that’s no longer true. Once you’re looking at the menu, the psychology at play can turn smart choices into expensive ones.
The common process when ordering
When visiting a fast-food restaurant, have you noticed how hard it is just to grab something snacky? A chicken sandwich can quickly become a whole meal or a combo.
The above is by design, and with costs climbing, it becomes easy to overspend (and overeat).
Here’s some psychology at play: picture a menu showing three sizes.
- A $1.99 budget menu with small, skimpy items.
- A $5.99 medium-size meal, combining a few of the skimpy items into a meal.
- A $7.99 large option with bigger, better items.
Your brain will likely focus on portion size in relation to value.
For instance, if ordering from the budget menu, you often buy multiple items, so you look at the medium meal for cost savings. However, the medium meal often comes across as less value, with smaller portion sizes than the large option. This is often because the items bundled in the large meal have higher prices on their own versus the budget options.
This combination of factors drives you to think, “I’ll have the large option.”
Quiet nudges on the menu
Chowhound reported that this is the decoy effect and it works because the middle option is often designed to look like a bad deal, even if nobody actually says it out loud.
The same trick exists in combo offers. For example, you’ll see a single item next to a bundle that costs only a little more.
Other nudges include having interactive boards with meal options, large variations, and other items as the default setting.
On top of this you also get upsell items like cookies and ice cream at great prices.
By the end of your order, your planned $1.99 sandwich is now a $13 meal.
Simply put, a headline deal is the hook and it gets you into the app or to the counter. Once in, the extras start stacking up, one polite suggestion at a time.
What to do when ordering
As Fox Business put it, the decoy effect is a psychology tactic that makes bigger sizes look like bargains. Therefore, the trick is to pause for around five seconds before deciding if you actually want to scale up from what you originally wanted in the first place.
We recommend you decide the following before ordering:
- Decide your spending limit and stick to it.
- Choose the size of the meal you want first, and don’t follow the menu.
- Skip the automatic add-ons to stop bits and pieces from becoming a big expense.
As someone who has succumbed to the upsell often, I know it’s hard to ignore. The key is to know that it is happening and to have some tools that may help you avoid running up an unforeseen bill. At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with a big fast-food meal, if that’s what you wanted in the first place.