McDonald’s uses AI to set “optimal” menu prices store by store
McDonald’s is increasingly using artificial intelligence to guide menu prices across the U.S. and some global markets, Reuters reported Tuesday after reviewing pricing-engine screenshots and interviewing people with first-hand knowledge of the system.
The world’s biggest burger chain is running a store-by-store system that guesses what a neighborhood will pay, and franchisees told Reuters that saying no gets written down. That is the same kind of computer-set pricing that already put Instacart and Wendy’s in public fights.
On Tuesday, 29 September 2026, Reuters published an exclusive by Waylon Cunningham on how McDonald’s guides menu prices. The wire says the chain is increasingly using artificial intelligence to guide those prices across the United States and in some markets outside the country. Reuters says the workings of the system, how far the AI goes, the company’s worry about regulators, and the friction with franchisees had not been reported before. For the story, Reuters reviewed screenshots of the pricing engine taken in August and spoke with nine people who have first-hand knowledge of the strategy. A franchisee is an owner who runs a McDonald’s under the brand, rather than a restaurant the company operates itself. Those lines are Reuters’s. This is that newsroom’s investigation. It is not a McDonald’s announcement.
The engine, as Reuters describes it, uses machine learning to keep reading sales. Machine learning means the software looks for patterns in past transactions and turns those patterns into a suggested price. Reuters says it analyzes data from millions of daily transactions across nearly 14,000 restaurants and produces what the company calls “the optimal price” at each location, for each item on the menu, from Big Macs to discounted coffee for seniors. Nearly 14,000 is the restaurant count Reuters prints. Optimal, in the company’s phrase, is the price the system picks as the best one for that store. Those lines are Reuters’s.
One factor the system turns up is an estimate of how much the people at that store are willing to pay. Willingness to pay is the most the software thinks a neighborhood will accept before customers go elsewhere. Screenshots of the screen franchisees use, which Reuters reviewed, include the line “Your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to Price,” based in part on “customer willingness to pay in your area.” Medium sensitivity is the label on that screen for how much that store’s sales move when the price moves. Reuters also says the engine has widened existing gaps in the price of the same item between restaurants, including from one neighborhood to the next in the same area. Three franchisees told Reuters that. Those lines are Reuters’s, from the screenshots and those owners.
Reuters also checked prices on the McDonald’s app in September. A company-run store in Fresno, California, listed a Big Mac at $5.69. Another company-run restaurant two miles away listed the same sandwich at $6.89, which Reuters calls a 21 percent premium. Reuters says it could not confirm whether that gap came from the pricing engine or from something else. Those two prices are what Reuters saw on the app.
The same platform shows public prices pulled from the online menus of nearby competitors, including Wendy’s and Burger King. Those chains told Reuters they do not use AI when they decide prices. A competitor’s menu on the screen is a display of prices already posted in public. It is not a report that Wendy’s or Burger King prices with AI.
McDonald’s told Reuters that franchisees are free to set their own prices. The company said the pricing portal is “a tool, not a mandate, designed to provide restaurant-specific recommendations to help franchisees deliver value for customers and make informed business decisions.” A portal is the site the owners log into. A mandate would be an order. McDonald’s is calling the number a recommendation. The company said costs and other factors differ from store to store, and that restaurants even a few miles apart can sit in different markets. It described the Reuters reporting as “speculative and uninformed” claims that “attempt to recast a standard business practice as something controversial.” Those sentences are McDonald’s, as Reuters prints them.
Five store owners told Reuters the company pressured them to use the AI pricing tools. A franchisee document from June, which Reuters reviewed, shows McDonald’s records deviations from the recommendations in detail. A deviation is a price the owner charged that does not match what the tool suggested. In January, McDonald’s started requiring franchisees to be “constructively engaging with McDonald’s approved Pricing Consultant and Tools” as part of its new business standards. That line is from an internal note sent to franchisees and reviewed by Reuters. The portal’s terms, which Reuters also reviewed in August, say franchisees are “always free to determine the final price.” The reporting does not say the law forces an owner to charge the number on the screen.
Chief executive Chris Kempczinski told investors in August that, because of recent changes in how the company reviews franchisees, “pricing non-compliance in certain cases is part of those conversations.” Non-compliance, in that sentence, means an owner who did not follow the pricing guidance. The quotation is his, as Reuters reports it.
The same terms warn owners about antitrust law. Those rules limit companies from setting prices together with their competitors. The portal says franchisees who use the tool risk that kind of scrutiny because restaurant owners “may be competitors.” The wording Reuters quotes says owners “may be competitors of each other,” so “it is particularly important for all Users of the Tool to understand and comply fully with anti-trust and competition laws,” and that owners should ask their own lawyers for further guidance. McDonald’s said it takes antitrust compliance seriously, and that the guidance in those terms is not evidence of anticompetitive behavior. Those lines are the terms and the company’s statement, as Reuters reports them.
Tiger Analytics runs the AI platform, two former Tiger employees told Reuters. They said McDonald’s works closely with Tiger and regularly supplied rules and company targets, such as drawing more customers or raising profit. Tiger declined to comment on its work for McDonald’s. Examples those former employees gave of the rules: put increases on items that have not had a price rise in at least two years; raise a price only if that item has already gone up recently in at least 30 percent of stores; leave ice cream and drinks out of increases during the summer. Those examples are the former employees’, as Reuters reports them.
Reuters sets the McDonald’s engine next to earlier public fights over computer-set prices. In 2024 Wendy’s drew criticism after its chief executive said the chain would test dynamic pricing, prices that move with demand. Wendy’s told Reuters those comments were misunderstood and that it did not put that system in place. Instacart, in December, stopped using AI tools that showed different grocery prices to different shoppers in a limited test, after customers and lawmakers objected. Instacart said it will never use a person’s information to set an item’s price. Those lines are Reuters’s account of those earlier fights. They are not a claim that Wendy’s or Burger King prices with AI.
Reuters also explains why headquarters and owners can want different prices. The company makes most of its money by taking a percentage of franchisees’ total sales, whatever one store’s profit is. Owners, Reuters says, have a stronger reason to raise prices, because wages, rent, and other costs of running a restaurant have climbed. The National Restaurant Association estimates those costs are up 36 percent since 2019. That 36 percent is the association’s estimate, as Reuters prints it.
In plain terms, Reuters says McDonald’s runs a machine-learning tool that suggests a price for each item at each restaurant, from millions of sales and a guess of what that neighborhood will pay. The company says the figure is a recommendation and that owners set the final price. Five owners told Reuters the company presses them to use the tool and writes down the times they do not. Wendy’s and Burger King told Reuters they do not price with AI.
The picture is a desk graphic of the path Reuters describes: daily tickets into a machine-learning engine, then an optimal price, then the franchisee portal. It is a diagram of that path. It is not a photograph of a restaurant or of the pricing screen.