Even McDonald’s CEO knows that the fast food giant is too expensive. Now it reduces prices to wake consumers short of money

The global fast food chain that has built its customers on affordability reduces its combo prices. This decision comes just a few weeks after CEO Chris Kempczinski admitted that the menu had become too expensive.

McDonald’s and its American franchises concluded an agreement to assess eight popular combos meals at 15% less than the total cost of purchase items separately, The Wall Street Journal Reported for the first time, quoting the people involved in the discussions. The drop in prices will come into force next month. McDonald’s also reintroducing its brand of “additional value” with a breakfast of $ 5 and a special Big Mac and McNugget of $ 8 later, according to the report.

McDonald’s did not immediately respond to FortuneComment request.

During a recent call for results, Kempczinski said that consumer value perceptions are most influenced by the basic prices of the menu.

“Too often … you see meals combined at the price of more than $ 10, and that absolutely shapes value perceptions,” said Kempczinski.

Kempczinski added the “largest driver” of what shapes the overall perception of a consumer of the value of McDonald’s is the menu card.

“We have to fix this,” he said.

In the past two years, McDonald’s has been criticized online for its prices by customers concerned about value. An article in 2023 on X about a Big Mac combo meal of $ 18 has become viral, triggering a debate that the fast food chain had become too expensive. The position even sparked a response from the president of McDonald’s USA, who said that the meal price was an “exception”, and that the chain prices had not exceeded inflation.

McDonald’s decision to reduce basic combo meals reports more than a change in marketing because the brand recognizes that economic strains affect business.

In May, KEMPCZINSKI said that the company’s first quarter of the United States with low-income consumers had decreased by “almost two figures” and that intermediate income consumer traffic dropped almost the same amount. He added that the growth in high -income consumer traffic “remains solid, illustrating the divided American economy where consumers with low and average income, in particular, are weighted by the cumulative impact of inflation and increased anxiety about economic perspectives.”

Despite sales comparable to the United States of the company, the decrease of 3.6% in the first quarter, which shows the worst since the pandemic – strategies that have strategies such as themed meals, including recent collaboration with “A Minecraft Movie”, raised sales in the second quarter after two consecutive quarters of decline.