They got weirdly expensive for obscure reasons. People have always shit on them for the quality of their food but I'd wager that like myself those critics have probably had their fair share of golden arches to be able to make that assesment and until recent times probably continued to do so all whilst grumbling about the quality. I'm not disputing the low quality, it has always been a product of economic efficiency and not culinary prowess, but nevertheless they have for many decades represented a kind of minimum standard that almost everyone was willing to settle for because of low prices, consistency and ubiquity. Now they have abandoned the cheap part of this triangle. I don't understand what's going on in old Ronald's bright red head these days because if you don't deliver on the cheap part of the equation then there's not much else left to recommend McDonalds. They're still consistent-ish (even that's kind of going by the wayside) but that doesn't say much when they're consistently bottom of the barrel whilst also being expensive to top it all off. Ubiquity is still a strong draw, they're kinda crappy, and overpriced but they're still here wherever that is in the world, but ultimately that only works so long as nothing else is here too since they no longer compete on price.

It's a weird strategy to have opted for having invented and perfected the streamlined factory food restaurant model that took over the world. It worked miraculously well, why would you fuck with arguably the most important part of the trifecta? Evidently it wasn't the masterplan of super smart business minds that can see well past my simple analysis because lo and behold, if you sell cheap crap and then raise the price so it becomes expensive crap, you tend to get fewer takers.