The idea of dynamic pricing baffles me. The fact that big corps are trying this to extract more money out of consumers should be illegal. Unless dynamic pricing follows the consumer.

McDonald’s is increasingly using artificial intelligence to guide menu prices across the U.S. and some global markets, a plan that aims to boost headquarters’ profit but risks alienating customers and attracting antitrust scrutiny. One pricing factor supercharged by AI: an estimate of how much each store’s patrons are willing to pay.

Consumers at first will not take this lying down, I have seen dynamic pricing and the fact that this is being done by AI makes it a bit funny. the factor is that AI doesn’t understand why people are buying something. So what happens if a group targets a low priced item on a menu for a few months and then pulls the rug on said product, it would create an AI model in a panic. AI is good at dealing with averages… give it an outlier and it does not know what to do.

The details of how that pricing system works, its extensive use of AI, the company’s regulatory concerns and the tensions with its franchisees haven’t been previously reported. For this story, Reuters reviewed screenshots of the company pricing engine taken in August and interviewed nine sources with first-hand knowledge of the burger chain’s strategy. McDonald’s pricing ‌engine uses machine-learning algorithms to continually analyze data from millions of daily transactions across McDonald’s nearly 14,000 restaurants and generate what the company calls “the optimal price” at each location for each menu item, from Big Macs to discounted coffee for seniors.

They think they are being clever to drive a few pennies of profit out of customers, the problem here is this is McDonalds which already has earned its way into common language as a McJob. Given that if they spite enough customers, they will revolt and it wont be pretty. One post to a website and a bit of patience people can turn an AI profit machine into gaming the system until it crashes.

A Reuters check of prices in September on the McDonald’s mobile app showed price differences. For example, ​a company-run store in Fresno, California sells a Big Mac for $5.69, but another company-run restaurant two miles away sells the same sandwich for $6.89, a 21% premium.

The other thing right here is again playing with fire. What’s to stop a person from buying from Store A and returning to store B and pocketing the 21% premium. Some frydrone is not going to wait around while someone is trying to fish up a receipt on a still warm meal.

In January, McDonald’s started requiring franchisees to be “constructively engaging with McDonald’s approved Pricing Consultant and Tools” as part of its new business standards, according to an internal communication sent to franchisees and reviewed by Reuters.

As I stated in beginning AI is good to be an average at things, but once you start adding outliers to the model like a stores finance model shows and uptick in cheeseburgers to the point of near absurd and other stores show a drop because people are spiking the model the AI is going to say to increase the price and once that happens suddenly cheeseburger purchases not only drop from the price increase but people manipulating the prices stop screwing with the AI McDonalds corporate is going to panic because the AI modeling of the price is showing to be failing. In all honesty to guide a model like this it would not take very many extra purchases in a day to corrupt sales data 100 cheeseburgers would be enough to throw a model off. Once people start poisoning the sale model it has some pretty bad outcomes.

First the store sees the sales spike, The AI and Store manager see it and start carrying more of that product. The problem here is product in a store like this is perishable. if the rug is pulled a month later you have a store manager stuck with product rotting losing money, You have pissed off consumers stopping going to that store which creates more wasted product and the manager is stuck with his hat in his hands because the machine told him to buy something that no one could see.

If McDonalds was an isolated store in a tube this would not happen but go to google maps and go to any city and type McDonalds , you will have 3 to 5 in 2 minutes driving distance of each other. McDonalds wants profits and they are instead are going to get a model collapse because in the US you basically have 5 minutes in any direction to a McDonalds and consumers that are easy to spite.

Here is a map where I picked a random area just because it’s random and it shows the exact issue I said.

Examples of McDonald’s parameters for the price engine included, according to the two employees: focusing increases on menu items that have not had a price increase in at least two ​years; only increasing prices on items that have had recent price increases in at least 30% of stores; excluding ice creams and drinks from price increases during summer months.

Lastly McDonalds mapped out the whole game here. Not only are they exposing the weakness here they are making this exploitable to the point where a group of 20 people could cause profit rot on multiple store in an area and McDonalds reliance on the AI Magic Machine will cause damage to no end of the franchisee. Also as I have said before model rot can come unintentionally if a school bus from a class trip comes in for a week it will cause massive model issues. They will buy too much and too little stock in order to balance out an AI that sees a jump in sales because of a class trip.

Update! The Legal McHammer Drops:

Well now.. It’s as if On October 2, 2026, a nationwide class action lawsuit dropped and the company is alleged to have violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The lawsuit claims McDonald’s took non-public transaction data to run an algorithmic price-fixing ring across independent franchisees. McDonald’s tried to say “AI does not set the price of a Big Mac.” Sound familiar? Sounds like when the CEO said he “loved” their product.. When you try to force independent franchisees to feed an AI engine so it can coordinate price hikes down to the penny, it isn’t smart retail. it’s an automated crime posing as AI.

McDonalds has ensured that the McJob stays exactly what it is, they are letting a machine that does not have the instinct to run the numbers and see why sales are what they are. A worker who sees two buses pull up will throw extra fries on and know exactly why he did that. AI can’t see the bus pull up and causes the price to jack up a week later because a School play was in a theater for 2 weeks. The worker knows that there was a play by intuition, The AI only sees higher than normal purchase rate. This is why for the same reason 20 people with a few dollars and being bored can cause a store to lose thousands. Again corporate greed and their belief that AI is magic is going to be the downfall.

Welcome to McFelonies would you like Fries with that?

Attributions from:
Yahoo! Finance: Inside McDonald’s push to have AI price your Big Mac
Reuters.com: McDonald’s hit with class action alleging AI-powered menu price-fixing