McDonald's and Burger King's meal deals aren't changing fast food's pricey reputation

• Fast-food restaurants have debuted meal deals to win over inflation-weary diners.
• But they haven't changed popular perception about whether fast food is good value, per a survey.
• Fewer consumers think fast food is a good deal now than did in early 2020, Morning Consult found.

2024 has become the year of meal deals at fast-food chains.

Perhaps the highest-profile example is McDonald's $5 meal, which the company said last month was drawing in more people to its restaurants.

But it turns out that these hot deals aren't doing much yet to convince more people that fast food isn't expensive.

That's what a new survey by Morning Consult released on Wednesday found. The survey asked consumers each month this year whether they considered several fast-food chains to be a "good value relative to their cost," Morning Consult said.

In July, far more respondents said that fast food was good value than didn't — 43 percentage points more, in fact.

But that's close to 10 percentage points less than in early 2020, before the pandemic and before inflation sent most food prices higher. The share of consumers who said they thought that fast food was a good value has declined in the four years since.

Crucially, there's been almost no change over the last few months as restaurants started launching their cheap eats, according to the data.

"Unfortunately, these moves have yet to greatly change consumer perceptions of the industry's value," Lindsey Roeschke, a travel & hospitality analyst with Morning Consult, told Business Insider.

Fast-food chains have increased prices over the past two years as broader inflation drove the cost of many goods higher. The pace of increases has since slowed, but prices remain high for many consumers.

The latest round of restaurant earnings showed brands from Starbucks to KFC posting falling quarterly same-store sales in the US, leading some analysts to say that fast-food chains need to cut prices.

Several fast food chains have been touting value meals and menus this year. Taco Bell unveiled its new Cravings Value Menu in January, including 10 items that cost $3 or less. Burger King also brought back its $5 value meal in May and plans to sell it through October.

But the number of customers who said they were likely to purchase fast food in general still rose by less than a percentage point in July, Morning Consult also found.

The diners surveyed, however, gave fast-food restaurants overall better marks for value than fast-casual chains such as Sweetgreen and Chipotle, Roeschke said, indicating that some customers might be choosing fast food over other options.

McDonald's initially planned to sell its $5 meal for a month starting in late June. But the chain has since said that most of its restaurants will offer the deal through August.

Joseph Erlinger, president of McDonald's USA, said on an earnings call in July that the deal is changing consumers' — especially low-income diners' — opinions of the chain's value. "It's really performed and done exactly what we wanted it to do," Erlinger said of the $5 meal.

While there's evidence that McDonald's saw a lift in visits after it started serving the $5 meal, it might take more than a promotion on the menu for a month or two to convince more diners that fast food is a good deal, Roeschke said.

"It's really hard to shift the perception of value that quickly," especially with the "overwhelming familiarity that people have with a brand like McDonald's," she said.

Do you work at McDonald's or another fast-food restaurant chain and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com