While on this subject -- my family and I very rarely eat out and it's been that way since before greedflation hit. I realize that's not the case or even feasible for everyone. For anyone in a situation where they actually need to eat out (or just really, really want to), start looking at your local sit-down restaurants. Some of them are cheaper to eat at now than to go through a drive through and grab a 'value' meal.
Even beyond the fact that time, energy, motivation, knowledge aren't always available to cook... There are a TON of food deserts in the United States. Places where your options are one of 3 fast food joints, or a dollar general. The nearest grocery store is sometimes an hour away. And, of course, if you live in the food desert, you probably work in the food desert, which is going to have shit wages, meaning your car probably isn't reliable enough to get groceries from that far away.
In my experience, almost every small business restaurant has jumped on the greedflation train too. Otherwise these big corpos wouldve adjusted their pricing.
They sell them in the frozen section at most grocery stores... Not McD branded or anything, but it's not like there's anything remotely special or unique about them.
Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores have long sold ~20 packs of the exact same hash browns for like $5-7 dollars a pack. You just have to deep fry them if you want them to taste the same.
ALDI sells basically the same thing in their frozen food section. Unfortunately since I've been shopping at ALDI for the past couple of years it is one of the only things that has increased in price a lot (via the amount you get per package decreasing a lot). They used to sell these big packs with like 80 in them for $4 or $5. Now they come in something closer to a 20-25 pack for close to the same price.