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“Wankers once used mobile phones, but now that’s sort of changing. And yobs once lived in cottage homes: Ain’t social change amazing?” – TISM, “Whatareya”
Mum was a child of the Great Depression. I vividly remember, when my sister grumbled about lamb chops again, Mum scolding, “You’ll be glad of chops one day, my girl!” Mum’s intended lesson was that, when we grew up, we’d be grateful for cheap cuts of meat to feed the family. Little did she imagine that lamb chops would one day fetch top dollar. I remember when butchers used to practically give lamb shanks away.
Mind you, Mum also used to tell us how a chicken dinner was a rare luxury for working-class families, back in the day. Then it became the cheap-eat option.
Looks like things are going full circle.
Consumption of chicken, the cheapest, most popular protein for Australians, who eat 50kg each a year, is down for the first time in decades, and falling sales at KFC and McDonald’s is being seen as a big contributing factor.
MPs at a Parliament House lunch on Tuesday to promote chicken production and consumption with a celebrity chef were told retail research suggested people were visiting KFC and McDonald’s less and were spending less when they did have a night out.
As they have in Britain for years, thanks to fanatical elite dedication to ‘net zero’, poor people are having to choose between heating and eating. Add a housing crisis caused largely by mass immigration, and it’s even worse.
Despite decades of steady growth in chicken consumption MPs were told there was a significant downturn of “high single figures” – between 5 and 9 per cent – in chicken sales at the retail outlets. MPs were also told cutting back on takeaway food was a result of families prioritising “paying the mortgage or the power bill”.
Skyhooks once sang how it was “a bit queer” to be “a poor man who can’t drink his beer”. Nowadays, poor folks can’t eat their dirty bird.
Australia’s biggest chicken producer, Ingham’s, is expected to confirm the fall in consumption in its annual report on Friday. Nationals MP for Hinkler in Queensland, Keith Pitt, said in poorer electorates like his, a Friday night dinner at KFC or McDonald’s was the equivalent of a luxury night out for some.
“Normally as you go around on a Friday or Saturday night the KFC and McDonalds’ drive throughs and restaurants are packed, the queues come out into the street,” he told The Australian on Wednesday. “But not now, they’re deserted. I said publicly recently that the cost of gas was making it difficult to cook a steak and I had people saying they couldn’t afford a steak or to eat out and were buying frozen pies and sausage rolls.”
The crisis is hitting even the biggest of global unassailables.
Globally McDonald’s has recorded its first drop in sales in nearly four years, as customers cut back on takeaway because of the cost-of-living crunch.
According to the McDonald’s figures, sales at locations open for at least a year fell 1 per cent over the April-June period compared with a year earlier.
This was the first decline for McDonald’s since the pandemic.
Collins Foods, which operates 279 KFC outlets in Australia, has reported customers were cutting back on spending in May and June, with same-store sales down 0.8 per cent compared with the same time a year ago.
Bear in mind, too, that takeaway food like KFC and McDonald’s is relatively cheaper than it was 50 years ago. We’ve all seen the memes lamenting how cheap a KFC menu was in the ’70s. But if you use an inflation calculator, you’ll see that those ‘cheap’ 1970s prices were not only costlier in terms of ’70s dollars than KFC now is, in today’s money, but a 2024 combo meal is bigger than a ’70s one.
Even so, more and more people are just unable to afford it.
[Interim KFC chief executive Kevin Perkins] said KFC customers were battling higher mortgage rates, rents and energy bills, and feeling the impact of inflation. “Significant cost-of-living and inflationary pressures are expected to remain for much of the year ahead, impacting sales growth, and we expect margin pressure across the group,” he said last week. KFC would look at more “bundling” of menu items in special offers, to help families under pressure.
All in all, bad news for South Auckland.
