They've captured the user base with the money that corporate was pumping into the app deals, and are in the process of enshittifying it by transferring the value to themselves instead of the users.
This can work in a lot of industries - I am skeptical fast food is one of them. Switching costs are low, alternates are plentiful, and collecting information (reviewing deals/prices across companies) is relatively easy.
If McDonald's enshittifies its deals while continuing to raise prices, it's way too easy for loyal customers to go elsewhere. I'm saying this as a huge fan and extremely loyal customer of McDonald's for decades... they are at serious risk of losing people like me. As I stated, I've gone from 15-20 visits to 1 since last June/July, whenever they made the big change.
We've got similar opinions here. I'm just pointing out that the overall experience here feels familiar, and it wasn't until reading this thread that I really put it together.
I agree with you that I'd be surprised if Enshittification works as well here as it does in tech, but maybe since there's an app involved, they just think they can get away with it. Who knows.
They've captured the user base with the money that corporate was pumping into the app deals, and are in the process of enshittifying it by transferring the value to themselves instead of the users.