Presumably if the meat packers also raise wages to keep up with inflation, they will have to charge McDonald’s higher prices for patties. Similarly for lettuce growers, beverage bottlers, etc. All these would put small amounts of pressure on the price of a burger. If the ultimate price ends up going from 2$ to 3$, suddenly the 10$ to 15$ wage hike doesn’t mean anything (except for people who didn’t get the wage hike in the first place).
Tripled sounds like a lot, so I trawled through some old pictures of the BK menu. I think the NJ price from 2011 is probably the closest to Seattle (price varies by location), so the whopper meal price is ~1.66x. Inflation is ~1.27x
Ah, so it's necessarily a compounding effect across the supply chain, then? E.g. assuming 2.5% price increases: energy costs are 1.025x as expensive > fertilizer is now (1.025^2)x as expensive > crops are (1.025^3)x > beef is ^4 > patties ^5 > so now McDs pays 1.025^5 = 13% more on beef, pushing prices up >13% of their avg previous beef cost. The argument is that it could easily get above 50% given cycles in the economy.
