There is something quietly infuriating about leaving a restaurant and immediately thinking, “I can’t believe I just paid for that.” It’s not just the cost. It’s the combination of high expectations, an even higher bill, and a plate of food that somehow missed the mark entirely. Across America right now, millions of diners are having exactly that moment. With food prices still elevated from years of post-pandemic inflation and consumer wallets stretched thin, the question of value has never felt more urgent.
Fast food costs have risen by nearly half in the past decade, and patience is running out. Chains that once felt like affordable or reasonable choices are now drawing serious backlash from real customers who are voting with their feet. Let’s dive in.
1. Shake Shack: The Burger That Costs Like a Fine Meal
Let’s be real. When people hear “fast food,” they’re not expecting to pay what feels like a small dinner bill for a burger and fries. Shake Shack keeps ending up at the top of the overpriced list, and the data backs it up hard. A Preply study analyzed nearly 60,000 Google reviews for more than 10,000 restaurants in the top 50 U.S. cities, and Shake Shack received more complaints about overpriced food than any other restaurant chain among those thousands of eateries considered.
The complaints arrived after two price hikes in 2024, and customers across America have been vocal. The cost of a single ShackBurger typically falls between $6.99 and $7.99, depending on the region. Add fries, and that’s at least $11.48, not including one of its namesake shakes or a beverage. Think about that. Roughly twelve dollars before you even get a drink. For a lot of people, that math just doesn’t add up.
2. Five Guys: Famous for Fries, Infamous for the Bill
Five Guys has built a devoted following. The burgers are good. The fries are genuinely excellent. But spending nearly as much as you would at a sit-down restaurant, for a meal served in a paper bag, is where many customers draw the line. Burgers with two beef patties cost between roughly $9 and $13, depending on where in the country you dine, and that’s before you add the famous Five Guys fries.
Five Guys, whose prices have been decried as “out of control,” followed closely behind Shake Shack as one of the chains with the most overpriced food complaints in Preply’s wide-ranging study. Honestly, it’s not the food quality people are complaining about. It’s the expectation gap. When the total comes out close to $20 for one person at a fast-casual counter, something feels off.
3. McDonald’s: The Golden Arches Now Demand Golden Prices
The burger giant briefly became the poster child for higher fast-food prices in 2024, leading the company to make a rare public rebuttal against social media posts claiming that its prices had more than doubled since 2019. That very fact should tell you something. When a global fast food company feels the need to issue official fact sheets about its own pricing, consumer frustration has clearly reached a boiling point. McDonald’s prices have increased by around 40% on average since 2019, which is still a big jump.
Customers have been fuming over higher prices, particularly at fast food restaurants, with complaints of $3 McDonald’s hash browns and $16 meals going viral on TikTok. McDonald’s recently experienced the worst quarter since the 2020 pandemic, with U.S. same-store sales falling 3.6%, the largest three-month drop since Q2 2020. The brand that once symbolized cheap, accessible eating has become a symbol of a different kind entirely.
4. Red Lobster: Cheddar Biscuits Can’t Save a Sinking Ship
There is a particular kind of sadness that comes with watching a beloved chain unravel in real time. Red Lobster was, for a long time, a middle-class staple. Families celebrated birthdays there. It felt special without being intimidating. Then the prices crept up, the quality wavered, and the famous “Endless Shrimp” promotion became something of a cautionary tale. Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a failed lease-back agreement and the Endless Shrimp promotion backfired against company revenue, and the chain permanently shuttered more than 120 restaurants in 2024.
After that tumultuous 2024, the chain continued its contraction, with new ownership working to stabilize the brand while dozens of underperforming restaurants permanently closed their doors throughout 2025. The company is focusing on a smaller, more profitable core of locations, but for many towns, the local Red Lobster has simply vanished. When customers feel a chain no longer delivers on its promise of good seafood at reasonable prices, the relationship tends to end quickly and quietly.
5. TGI Fridays: Every Day Is Not, in Fact, a Friday Anymore
TGI Fridays once represented something genuinely fun. The loaded appetizers, the cocktails, the idea of Friday energy on any weeknight. But that reputation eroded steadily as prices climbed and the experience began to feel tired. The chain was once one of the most beloved restaurants in the country, but over time it began being viewed as a somewhat outdated place to eat, and this culminated in a bankruptcy claim in November 2024.
The chain saw its U.S. outlets decrease from 152 to just 81 by the end of 2024, which is a staggering contraction for a brand that was once everywhere. Prices for food away from home rose 3.7% in the 12 months ending September 2025, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and chains like TGI Fridays that couldn’t offer clear value got punished for it. Paying bar-and-grill prices for an experience that feels like it belongs a decade ago is a hard sell for most diners today.
6. Applebee’s: Neighborhood Grill, Neighborhood-Sized Frustration
Applebee’s sits in an odd position. It wants to be the affordable neighborhood option, yet Applebee’s same-store sales declined for the last six straight quarters, according to company filings. That is not a small blip. That is a sustained message from the market that something is fundamentally off. Even the giant Applebee’s, a household name in American dining, is shrinking, with parent company Dine Brands planning to shut down dozens of underperforming locations by the end of 2025.
Applebee’s comes in near the bottom for menu satisfaction in customer experience analyses, with new menu items like the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich seeing barely any mentions, implying they may not be exciting to consumers. There is also inconsistency with portion sizes, with customers describing them as both huge and tiny. Even deal-oriented menu items like the All You Can Eat promotion saw a price increase of more than 6% compared to the previous year. When your cheapest deals are getting more expensive, the value argument collapses.
7. KFC: The Colonel Has Lost the Recipe for Customer Trust
KFC is a genuinely puzzling case. It’s one of the most iconic fast food brands in the world, beloved internationally, yet it’s been struggling enormously in the country where it was born. KFC shows the steepest decline of any restaurant in the last year in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s quick-service category, falling from 81 in 2024 to 77 in 2025, a 5% drop. ACSI also reports KFC U.S. sales were down 5.2% in 2024.
Customers who say the chain has declined most often talk about its budding inconsistency, including chicken that is not as crisp, flavor differences compared to long-held recipes, longer hold times, and sides that feel hit-or-miss. Consumer spending on KFC fell by 4% to $4.34 billion, ranking it lower than newer chicken competitors like Raising Cane’s and Wingstop. When you’re paying KFC prices and not getting KFC quality, the experience turns into a frustrating memory of what the brand used to be.
8. Subway: Bigger, Pricier, and Somehow Still Disappointing
I know it sounds crazy, but there was a time when Subway genuinely felt like a smart, affordable choice. A footlong for a few bucks. Now, a customized sandwich can run close to what you’d pay at a proper deli, and diners are noticing. At its peak in 2015, Subway had approximately 27,000 U.S. restaurants. That number has been sinking ever since, and in 2024, it had to close a massive 631 restaurants, spending much of 2025 without a permanent CEO.
After years of rapid overexpansion, Subway has continued closing unprofitable locations, shutting down over 500 stores in 2025 as part of a plan to rebuild the brand’s reputation and focus on higher-traffic locations, while also investing in menu upgrades and store redesigns. Here’s the thing: the menu upgrades are genuinely better. The bread is improved. The ingredients are fresher. But the prices have risen to match, and many customers feel they’re now paying fast-casual rates for food that still arrives in a paper sleeve.
9. Denny’s: The 24-Hour Dream Is Fading Fast
There’s a certain nostalgic warmth to Denny’s. Road trips, late nights, grand slams at two in the morning. It was the diner of the people. Affordable, unpretentious, always open. Increasingly, though, diners are finding that the prices no longer match the promise. Denny’s experienced a terrible 2024 and has been struggling to stay in business, announcing the closure of 50 restaurants in just a few months, citing underperformance as the main reason, following a difficult period that saw many locations stop operating round-the-clock in a bid to save money.
In the same announcement, Denny’s stated it was closing 100 further restaurants throughout 2025, and then just a few months later said it was pressing ahead with closing dozens more. In total, 180 restaurants were due to close in just 24 months. Denny’s CFO Robert Verostek specifically pointed to inflation as the reason for the company’s financial struggles during an earnings call. When a diner chain built on low prices can no longer afford to offer those prices, it loses the core reason customers chose it in the first place.
10. Chipotle: “Lifestyle” Pricing for a Burrito Bowl
Chipotle holds a special place on this list because it positions itself as fresh, wholesome, and worth a little extra. For a while, that pitch worked brilliantly. Then the price increases kept coming. With July 2023 pricing sailing 20% above the close of 2020, the company isn’t shy about piling on the price upticks, even if there’s no additional food included for the trouble. Customers started to notice they were paying more and getting less, with social media erupting over smaller portion sizes.
Same-store sales were expected to decline in 2025, reversing a forecast of sales growth made just months earlier. Chipotle’s CEO pointed to “persistent macroeconomic pressures,” noting that customers earning under $100,000 annually, who account for roughly two-fifths of Chipotle’s sales, are dining out less frequently due to concerns about the economy and inflation. The broader industry context is a price-sensitive environment where chain sales growth of 3.1% in 2024 trailed menu price inflation of 4.1%. This is exactly what Chipotle has been dealing with, as fans who say the chain has slipped typically point to portion consistency and protein distribution that varies by crew and shift. Paying almost fifteen dollars for a bowl and then wondering if someone short-changed you on the chicken is not the vibe anyone is going for at lunch.
