Every afternoon Robert Karasin drives to his local McDonald’s, orders a coffee and sits with his friends to chat. It has become a daily ritual he refuses to skip. For President Trump, however, he was willing to make an exception.
Last October Karasin could “not get close” to the golden arches of Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, when the 2024 Republican presidential nominee came to flip burgers and cook french fries.
It was a spectacle that many residents still talk about to this day. Snipers lined the roofs of nearby buildings, roads were closed, an entirely different set of employees was brought in to work the shift and only a select group of customers were allowed to be served. “There were huge crowds in the street,” recalled Karasin, 78, a Trump voter.
The carefully managed campaign stunt was not only a publicity coup for Trump but for McDonald’s too. Since then, however, the fortunes of the fast-food chain — one of the president’s favourite restaurants — have taken a turn.
Earlier this month McDonald’s revealed it had suffered its largest drop in US sales since the pandemic, a fall that it blamed on people’s concerns about the economy. The company said it was navigating the “toughest of market conditions”.
This slide comes at a time when Trump is working to restore, somewhat in his own image, several of the nation’s most recognisable institutions. He has pledged to revamp Penn Station in New York and the White House Rose Garden; he wants to reopen the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco; and he lamented earlier this week that Hollywood was “dying a very fast death” and must be revived.
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Then there is McDonald’s. That this all-American behemoth, a symbol of how capitalism can work for the man on the street, could lose its shine may be one of the only economic markers that could alarm Trump — especially if it is faltering, at least in part, because of the White House’s own economic policies.
“He would not like to see McDonald’s fail, especially on his watch,” said George Ritzer, a sociologist and the author of The McDonaldization of Society. “He wants the publicity of being the ‘shining knight’ who saves or resurrects these American icons, especially when others have failed to do so.”
In its recent sales report, McDonald’s said its net income for the first quarter was $1.87 billion, a year-on-year decline from $1.93 billion. Spending from low-income consumers, meanwhile, was down by nearly double digits, and even the middle class has been spending less.
Phil Lempert, a food and consumer expert, believes persistently high food prices and Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs are to blame. “People are thinking whether they should be eating out during this period of uncertainty,” he said, adding that many Americans were tightening their belts in anticipation of economic pain. Trump has said his tariffs may cause “short-term” discomfort for consumers.
The cost of an average McDonald’s meal, which has already risen in recent years due to inflation, could “go even higher as a result of the tariffs”, Lempert added. “I’m sure that McDonald’s, whether it’s ingredients or imported products, are going to be affected.”
Karasin has been visiting the McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, a small town of 6,000 people close to Philadelphia, for half a century. He remembers when it first opened as a drive-thru in 1964, before becoming a sit-in restaurant for families to eat together. “‘For a nickel and a dime, you eat better at McDonald’s every time,’” he said, reciting an old saying that captured the appeal of the chain in the 1960s and 1970s.
Today, he said, fewer families visited the restaurant. “You don’t really see kids here anymore,” he said. “Prices are getting too high for average people. Back in the Sixties a regular cheeseburger cost 15 cents. Now it’s two and a bit dollars.”
Also, McDonald’s executives said last week, more people appeared to be skipping breakfast entirely to cut back on spending, or eating breakfast at home.
The president’s love affair with the golden arches has lasted for decades. In 2002, he appeared in a McDonald’s advertisement promoting menu items like the Big N’ Tasty. At a CNN town hall in 2016, he expressed his preference for fast food, citing consistency and cleanliness. He said: “You’re better off going there than someplace you have no idea where the food is coming from.”
During his first term in office, the president served trays of McDonald’s burgers to the Clemson Tigers football team on a visit to the White House. According to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the president’s favourite McDonald’s order is a “Big Mac, filet-o-fish, fries and a vanilla shake”.
However, Trump’s association with McDonald’s may be hurting the fast-food chain which, like so much else in America, has become a political football.
Meg Brown, 31, a resident of Feasterville-Trevose, said some of her friends were boycotting it because of Trump’s visit last year. “They go to different chains instead,” she said, her hands full with a quarter-pounder, Big Mac and fries. “He’s very polarising; it’s alienating people who hate him from the company.”
For another customer, John Dous, the fact that Trump loves McDonald’s was another reason to eat there. “If Trump likes it, I like it,” the 81-year-old said. He had opted for a vanilla milkshake and Big Mac. “I trust him to make McDonald’s great again.”
McDonald’s has faced turbulence before and its $226 billion market valuation suggests the company knows how to navigate financial headwinds.
However, Lempert says, many of the food chain’s attempts to “evolve” with the customer, from introducing healthier products to serving pizza, have failed. “I think that the problem is not only the food, but whether people simply want to go there,” he said, adding that the company faced a big challenge in winning over today’s Millennials and Generation Z, who were “very concerned about the environment, very concerned about value, very concerned about ingredients and health”.
McDonald’s rejected criticism that it was failing to evolve with the times, or was becoming unpopular with families. “McDonald’s serves nearly 90 per cent of the US population every year — including families, young people, shift workers, students and seniors,” it said. “We reflect the full spectrum of the American economy and have earned our place in people’s lives. We remain the No 1 [fast food] brand among Gen Z … We’ve also gained the most market share among teens in the past 12 months.”
One thing is certain: despite these challenges, McDonald’s can still count on Karasin as a loyal customer. He has no intention of ending his daily visits. Just don’t ask him to eat the food. “I only come for the coffee. The food is processed,” he said. “It’s not healthy for you.”
