Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
McDonald's and Taco Bell are competing for budget-conscious diners.
- Both McDonald's and Taco Bell have unveiled major overhauls to their value menus recently. The changes have been seen as an appeal to win over budget-conscious customers.
- McDonald's new dollar menu is tiered, ranging in price from $1 to $3, while Taco Bell's menu items are $1 across the board.
- Both menus have pretty fantastic deals, but in the end, Taco Bell's ends up being the best value.
Once again, the drums of war are sounding across the nation - the drums of a fast-food war.
The value menu battles have been waged across multiple fronts in the past few years, with Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell all vying for supremacy over budget-wary consumers.
And with McDonald's release of the new $1 $2 $3 Dollar Menu , the guns are blazing once more. McDonald's has struggled to lure in cost-conscious diners since it axed the Dollar Menu in 2013. The "McPick 2" deal bridged the gap for a while, but this new dollar menu is a huge step forward in the budget battles.Taco Bell entered the fray yet again with an overhaul of the Tex-Mex chain's popular dollar menu, adding several new items and sneakily calling out McDonald's in a press release . And Taco Bell's CEO, Brian Niccol, is incredibly optimistic about this shot of adrenaline to the dollar menu. "People ask the question: Who orders from the value menu?" Niccol told Business Insider's Kate Taylor. "The real question is, who doesn't? ... It doesn't matter if you're making $40,000 or $140,000, young, old."
But the actual question is this: which chain offers the better deal? We decided to take a look at each menu through the lens of four variables: pricing, quality, creativity, and value, the last of which was determined by a final averaging of the first three.
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They're both pretty appetizing deals on the surface. But excluding what one may desire at any given moment (maybe you're just craving a burger more than a taco, regardless of cost!), we're going to get to the bottom of which deal is the best bang for your buck.
Pricing: McDonald's.
McDonald's pricing method is somewhat unclear; some items have prices that make sense — a triple cheeseburger for $3 — while others don't feel like much of a deal at all, like this sausage McMuffin that also costs $3. Why not the real ham McMuffin? Feels like a cop-out.
Pricing: Taco Bell.
This one's pretty simple: Taco Bell's menu is always a dollar — no more, no less, excluding prices in cities like New York.
Point: Taco Bell.
Quality: McDonald's.
McDonald's has some pretty high-quality items on here, like the bacon McDouble (easily the best item on the menu) and the chain's revamped buttermilk chicken tenders. You know what you're getting and how you're getting them. McDonald's rarely slips on expectations of food quality. McNuggets are always McNuggets, and a cheeseburger is always a cheeseburger.
Quality: Taco Bell.
At Taco Bells the world over, quality varies. Simplicity of items is a recurring theme here, which can be good — but some things are constructed with the amount of care and precision seen in the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. There's not a lot of consistency there.
Point: McDonald's.
Creativity: McDonald's.
The range of McDonald's menu is adequate at best and rather limiting. There's only one breakfast item per tier; there are mostly burgers with a chicken item or two after that. One could argue that the menu is compact and covers the basics, sure, but after a while it feels a little constricting.
Creativity: Taco Bell.
Taco Bell's menu has an expansive selection of nearly 20 items, almost half of which are categorized as breakfast — and some of the items are fairly imaginative, like the caramel apple empanada shown above. And as we all know, Taco Bell has proven time and time again, for better or worse, that it can do a lot with just tortillas, meat, and cheese.
Point: Taco Bell.
Value: McDonald's.
Now we must leverage the menu's quantity and quality versus price, which is a real balancing act for any fast-food chain. McDonald's value is ... lopsided.
A Happy Meal for $3 is a fantastic value — a fair amount of food for comparatively little. And McDonald's quality is a near constant, which is comforting. Trust is rare in fast-food! But there's also a boring sausage McMuffin for $3, which isn't that far off from the regular, non-value price. Plus, the menu's smaller size is limiting.
Value: Taco Bell.
Meanwhile, Taco Bell has a large quantity of items for very little — but the quality varies greatly. Delicious items like the shredded chicken quesadilla or the potato breakfast burrito are at the same price point as the atrocious flatbread sandwich and the (downright lazy) cheese roll-up. Even with this inconsistency, the value at Taco Bell ekes out a win. The sheer amount of items you can get for a dollar means that nearly any budget-conscious diner will find a satisfying combination.
Point: Taco Bell.
So which is the best deal? My money's on Taco Bell, but only barely.
Both chains' menus offer fairly competitive bargains and decent food — if you know what to avoid. And while Taco Bell loses points for quality, it more than makes up for it in creativity of menu items and a nearly impossible-to-beat price point. When you steal the "Dollar Menu" value out from under McDonald's nose, you're bound to win.
Am I asking you to forget McDonald's and make Taco Bell your ride-or-die value menu? Of course not. But in terms of the best bang for your (quite literally) buck, Taco Bell ends up being the option with a more satisfying purchasing parity.
Winner: Taco Bell.