Shake Shack Takes the Crown for Most Expensive Fast-Food
You probably saw this one coming, but when it comes to jaw-dropping restaurant bills, Shake Shack has officially earned the top spot. An analysis found that Shake Shack has the most customer complaints about overly expensive fast food in America in 2024. The online language tutoring marketplace Preply recently analyzed nearly 60,000 Google reviews for more than 10,000 restaurants in the top 50 cities in the United States to find out which restaurants customers consider to be the most overpriced and fairly priced.
The numbers tell a brutal story when customers start doing the math at checkout. The problem is a basic burger, fries, and shake will set you back easily over $24 before tax, which is not cheap. Shake Shack has continued to adjust prices to offset inflation costs. It’s like watching your favorite local diner slowly transform into a fine dining experience, except the atmosphere hasn’t changed much.
Five Guys Gets Roasted for Out-of-Control Pricing
Nothing quite stings like realizing you just spent nearly thirty bucks on what should be a simple lunch. Five Guys, whose prices have been decried as “out of control,” and Sugar Factory followed Shake Shack as the chains with the second and third most overpriced food complaints. The situation got so bad that a viral receipt became the perfect symbol of everything wrong with fast-food inflation these days.
On March 1, X user @WallStreetSilv posted an image of a receipt from Five Guys that quickly went viral on the platform, garnering millions of views, and started another heated discussion about recent fast-food prices with “Five Guys prices are out of control,” the user wrote. Per the receipt, the customer spent $12.49 for a bacon cheeseburger with ketchup and mustard, $2.89 for a regular soda and $5.19 for a small fry, after tax and tip, the total came to $24.10. Think about that for a second – more than five dollars for a small portion of fries that you can finish in about three minutes.
According to MoneyGeek, a burger, fries and soda at McDonald’s costs around $6.19, up 11.5% from 2021 to 2022, while the same order at Five Guys charges costs $19.95 on average, up 13.5% during the same time period. That’s more than triple the cost for what many consider a marginally better experience. CEO Jerry Murrell explains “Our food prices fluctuate, we do not base our price on anything but margins, we raise our prices to reflect whatever our food costs are.”
Sugar Factory Serves Up Diabetes with a Side of Sticker Shock
If you thought burger joints were expensive, wait until you see what happens when Instagram-worthy desserts meet celebrity endorsements. Sugar Factory is the third chain considered overpriced and not good value for money, according to Preply’s analysis, with customer complaints about price being pretty scathing (one person called their drink “diabetes in a cup for $30”, and this was in 2018). This place makes Five Guys look like a bargain basement deal.
To be fair, Sugar Factory seems much more like a gimmick when compared to Shake Shack and Five Guys, which are at least attempting to serve reasonable food, whereas Sugar Factory offers $99 sundaes – it’s certainly not somewhere you go expecting a basic meal, it’s celebrity-endorsed, but not bank account-friendly. When a single dessert costs more than most people’s weekly grocery budget, you know something’s gone wrong with the pricing strategy.
Customer reviews paint a picture that’s somehow even worse than the prices suggest. While some guests appreciate the fun environment for special occasions, there have been consistent issues with service speed, “overpriced” menu items, and an abundance of flies – the experience is memorable but may not justify the cost for everyone. Overall, Sugar Factory is your typical overpriced, unimpressive tourist trap restaurant on the Riverwalk with a 20% tip already included so naturally, our waitress did the bare minimum. When you’re paying premium prices for what amounts to a theme park experience, at least make sure the theme park is clean and the staff cares about your visit.
