Two McDonald’s restaurants in Fresno, California, sit about two miles apart. At one company-operated location, a Big Mac cost $5.69. At the other, it cost $6.89. Same burger, same arches, same special sauce, and a 21 percent difference in price. Most people would shrug if the gap came down to rent or wages. What makes it worth a second look is how the number got there.
Reuters reported that McDonald’s uses machine learning to recommend menu prices for each location, drawing on transaction data, competitors’ prices and what the company describes as customer willingness to pay in the area. McDonald’s calls the system “a tool, not a mandate,” says franchisees set their own prices and describes the recommendations as optional. Several franchisees told Reuters they felt pressure to use them anyway. It is worth being precise about what this is. The reporting describes restaurant-level price recommendations. Reuters could not confirm whether the Fresno price difference resulted from the pricing engine or other factors. It does not show that individual customers are quoted personalized prices at checkout, or that a Big Mac surges at lunchtime like a rideshare on New Year’s Eve.
The same reporting notes that McDonald’s presented its pricing engine to investors as support for a larger corporate bet on affordability. That bet has been very public. Since early 2025 the company has leaned hard into value, from McValue to the relaunched Extra Value Meals, and executives have credited that push with gaining ground among low-income customers. Put those two facts side by side and the tension becomes clear.
When a brand tells people it cares about affordability, customers naturally bring their own circumstances to that promise. They think about what they can afford, what they paid last time and whether the company understands the pressure they are under. Discovering that the same brand is also calculating how much their neighborhood will tolerate changes how that message feels. A company can have a perfectly understandable business reason for charging different prices and still create a credibility problem through the way it describes those prices.
For a consumer, the immediate question is simple: why does someone two miles away get a better deal? Businesses should expect that question, because people compare prices when the difference matters to them. They may understand that rent, labor and other costs vary. They may be less comfortable with the idea that a higher price reflects a judgment about what people in their area will accept. A neighborhood also contains people in very different financial circumstances, so an assumption about the location can feel like an assumption about the individual standing at the counter.
I do not believe every price difference is unfair, and I believe businesses should be able to earn healthy margins. Having spent much of my career in technology, I have seen how relentless pressure to be cheaper can damage an industry. There is less room to develop better products, improve service or invest in the people doing the work. If a company has built a brand that customers value enough to pay more for, that strength serves a legitimate business purpose. None of that excuses the company from explaining its offer honestly.
Affordability is a broad word. To the business, it might mean keeping selected products accessible, running promotions in particular markets or making sure there is always an inexpensive way to buy a meal. To the customer, it can sound like a commitment that applies to everyone. Marketing creates trouble when it encourages the broad interpretation while the business operates according to a much narrower one. It is a little like advertising “all you can eat” and later clarifying that “all” referred to the salad bar. Nobody technically lied, and nobody feels good about it either.
There are ways to communicate a targeted policy clearly. Suppose a company decided to reduce prices more in communities experiencing greater financial pressure. It could say that plainly. I would understand that decision, and I think many customers would understand it too, including some who received less of a discount.
That example is a possible policy, not a description of what McDonald’s pricing system does. Willingness to pay and financial need are different things, and an algorithm optimizing for the first will not automatically serve the second. A company would need evidence that its decisions matched the explanation before presenting selective discounts as help for the communities that needed them most.
But the principle matters. A defensible decision, explained honestly, gives people something they can support. Some will still demand the same benefit regardless of their circumstances, and the brand does not have to personally win every argument. Other customers can recognize the reasoning and explain it to one another. I think about that whenever I work on a difficult public statement, because my own version of this problem arrived without any algorithm at all.
At CyberPowerPC, we faced it during tariff uncertainty and again when memory and storage costs were changing rapidly. Customers could buy at different times and encounter different prices. From their perspective, the product might look essentially the same. They could not see every cost change happening behind it, and we were concerned that they would read the fluctuations as opportunistic pricing. It is the same gap McDonald’s faces in Fresno, stretched across a calendar instead of a map: the customer sees the price difference but not the reasons for it.
Our public communications tried to close that gap. In our April 2025 tariff notice, we explained that existing inventory was unaffected by the new tariffs and that we were assessing the impact on future purchases. Later, our memory and storage announcement gave customers advance notice of a December price adjustment and explained the component-cost pressure behind it. The timing mattered. People were making purchasing decisions with their own budgets, and they deserved to understand what we knew, what was changing and where uncertainty remained.
“Our current inventory is unaffected by these new tariffs”
CyberPowerPC, “Latest US Tariff Updates (as of 4/3/2025)”. Excerpt from the company’s April 2025 customer notice.
Those conversations are rarely effortless inside a company. Different departments can reasonably worry about saying too much, creating confusion or making a situation sound worse than it is. My instinct is to play devil’s advocate from the customer’s side. What will someone who just bought think? What will someone saving for a computer think? What explanation would make sense to a person who already distrusts the industry? I want us to make a decision we can defend and then give people enough information to judge it for themselves.
That does not produce universal approval. People were unhappy and skeptical about our price updates, and their frustration was understandable. Some doubted that prices would ever come back down. Others appreciated the transparency or said they had found us fair in the past. Both reactions were present.
I would never take the supportive comments as proof that the communication solved the problem. A statement cannot demonstrate how a company will behave six months later. When we tell customers that pricing will adjust as conditions improve, our later actions have to support that commitment. This is why transparency has to continue after the announcement. It creates an expectation the business must keep meeting, including when costs fall and nobody is forcing the issue.
Nor do I expect every satisfied customer to come back and publicly congratulate us. Someone may quietly buy again, recommend us to a friend or simply decide that we handled a difficult situation reasonably. Those responses matter to me even though they are far less visible than an angry comment.
For McDonald’s, I would start by making the affordability promise specific enough that customers can understand what they are being offered. If the commitment concerns particular meals, locations or promotions, say so. If prices reflect local business conditions, explain those conditions in language a customer can follow. And if the pressures behind a higher price ease, the menu board should eventually show it.
An algorithm can help a company find the price a neighborhood will bear. It cannot decide whether that price fits the promise the brand has already made. That judgment still belongs to people. A company can pursue profit and still make a fair offer, but its credibility depends on whether the promise customers hear is one its pricing decisions can actually keep.