
McNugget Calculator - HeavenFox
https://heavenfox.github.io/mcnugget/
======
crazygringo
Fun fact: each nugget costs $0.06 to make (excluding overhead). [1] [2]

So even though it's $5 for 20 which seems cheap... it's still only $1.20 in
ingredients.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-profit-margin-on-
McDonalds...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-profit-margin-on-McDonalds-
Chicken-Nuggets)

[2] [https://imgur.com/gallery/CvHqp6V](https://imgur.com/gallery/CvHqp6V)

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TAForObvReasons
I recall famous chef / restauranteur, possibly Gordon Ramsay, giving a bare
minimum sale price of 4x the raw ingredient price for profitability. Assuming
the $0.06 estimate, $1.20 would imply a price of at least $4.80, pretty close
to the $5.00 price

~~~
elil17
But McDonalds has much smaller overheads than other restaurants because the
food is largely prepared and the prep work that does need to be done has been
engineered to be easy

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greedo
Uh no. The average franchise takes home 10% or so of sales before tax.

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elil17
3-5% is the average profit margin for a restaurant. Also, the profit for the
franchise owner is not the same as the total profit. McDonalds as a
corporation is charging the franchisee licensing fees (and often rent as
well), which should also be considered part of the profit.

Source: [https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/average-restaurant-profit-
marg...](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/average-restaurant-profit-margin)

~~~
greedo
But that profit doesn't accrue to the franchisee, who is the one paying for
equipment and labor. Franchise fees are a cost to him/her.

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gojomo
For me the rule of thumb here in SF is: even though I may only want 10
McNuggets, if there's anyone hanging around outside who looks like they'd
appreciate some, get the extra 10 (for 2¢/each!) to give away. (It comes in 2
boxes.)

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themmes
And that is exactly what they would like you to do. If you buy meat (or
anything for that matter), mind your footprint, only buy what you actually
need.

~~~
gojomo
Is 'they' McDonalds, or the people hoping for a handout outside?

Why can't I buy what somebody else needs? (The recipients seem happy to
receive the food, and though they'd probably prefer cash, I doubt they'd
prefer just 20¢.)

~~~
kgwgk
Think of the ecological footprint! Let them starve.

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Griffinsauce
There are other and better ways to stop them from starving. But muh freedom.

~~~
sokoloff
Taking "giving immediate food to someone hungry and asking for food" as the
baseline, what process improvement would you suggest over the
$0.21-for-10-nuggets expenditure?

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andreareina
I thought this would be about what quantities of nuggets you need to buy to
sum to the target number.

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/McNuggetNumber.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/McNuggetNumber.html)

~~~
FabHK
Or what the Frobeniusnumber is for given box sizes (ie, the largest number of
McNuggets that you cannot buy (exactly). For the classical sizes of {6,9,20}
it's 43).

~~~
lazycouchpotato
Here's a Numberphile video on it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNTSugyS038](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNTSugyS038)

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rock_artist
The calculator isn't global friendly :)

Here McNuggets arrives in the following packaging: 4, 5, 9, 12, 24

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bash-j
In my part of Australia it's: 3: $3 553kJ 6: $5.95 1110kJ 10: $8.30 1840kJ 20:
$13.35 3690kJ 24: $9.95 3690kJ 10:30AM - 12AM

Chicken bites (similar to popcorn chicken): 10 for $2 734kJ 10AM - 12AM

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SlowRobotAhead
Are your nuggets rated in kilojoules?

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joombaga
Most of the world uses kilojoules instead of calories.

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SlowRobotAhead
Yea, which is weird because calorie is already metric.

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TaylorAlexander
This makes me happy. I don’t even eat meat but it’s a charming project.

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throw20102010
You're not eating meat even if you eat McNuggets /s.

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jakear
You kid, but I recently found out that the Jack in the Box “2 tacos” are
actually meatless. (I think... it was hard to get a straight answer out of the
person I spoke to, but so far as I can tell they both “do not contain meat”
and “are not vegetarian”)

~~~
krackers
I think they do contain meat, just really processed [1]:

>Filling Ingredients: Beef, Chicken, Water, Textured Vegetable Protein

[1]
[http://assets.jackinthebox.com/pdf_attachment_settings/108/v...](http://assets.jackinthebox.com/pdf_attachment_settings/108/value/Ingredients_and_Allergens.pdf)

~~~
bparsons
Jack in the box is actually a subversive vegan activist organization.

~~~
dontbenebby
I don't actually mind vegan food (a lot of Thai/Chinese dishes with tofu are
very good), but meat substitutes are weak sauce IMHO. Don't try to make a
better walkman - invent the ipod. Which in this analogy is Mapo tofu:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapo_tofu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapo_tofu)

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hcrisp
I do a similar cost comparison when eating pizza by determining how much
bigger (more square area) the next size up is. If all you have is a non-
scientific calculator, the trick was to divide the square of the radius of
each pizza (since you are looking for the ratio of area, pi*r^2, and pi drops
out). For example, if comparing 16" and 12", you just evaluate 8×8 / 6×6 =
1.7x bigger. Usually cost of the 16" is much lower than 1.7 the 12" so might
as well get the larger size (and leftovers are fine).

~~~
paublyrne
It can be false economy of course because, leftovers or no leftovers, there's
a strong possibility that'll you'll just eat more food than you would have
otherwise. Food economy isn't a zero sum game.

~~~
hcrisp
I think in an economic sense I estimate the amount of utilization more pizza
will give me, and once I know how much costlier the next size will be per
square inch, only then I conclude if it's worth it or if "I'm not really
hungry enough to pay _that_ much!"

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DubiousPusher
This is basically the knapsack problem right?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem)

~~~
maweki
No. Linear optimization.

Edit: Sorry. It's linear optimization with integers and therefore in the same
complexity class as any other np complete problem.

~~~
maweki
For anybody reading this: IN THEORY

In practice the nugget per package gets cheaper as the package size increases
and therefore a greedy algorithm is very useful and probably linear in the
number of package types.

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octocode
Wow, I wish 40 nuggets cost 10 bucks here. It's $25 CAD ($18.56 USD)

~~~
LeSaucy
In Canada that’s only possible at Burger King.

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tobiasbischoff
Im upset. Can't use this in Germany. We don't have 4pcs. And 10pcs is a 9pcs
over here.

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RyanAF7
Will use this calculator should McDonald's ever switch back to the original
McNugget recipe.

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hahamrfunnyguy
What's the original recipe and when did it change?

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toast0
They changed from the assorted chicken parts (aka pink slime) to an all white
meat recipe (aka tastes like nothing) in the early 2000's. They've refined the
white meat recipe since then to remove chicken skin and artificial
preservatives.

I had occasion to eat at a McDonalds in India in 2010 or so, and they still
had the old recipe McNuggets and it was so much tastier.

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calahad
"nuggests"

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arcticbull
That's the first thing I saw on the site too haha.

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nreilly
It doesn’t break much when you use the McDelivery prices in Korea: 4: 2100 6:
3600 10: 5100 20: 8200

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HoochieKoo
It used to be pink slime. I guess each to their own.

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warpech
This would be a nice test assignment for recruiting

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Charlie_26
It's sad that a brain this bright is being wasted on a McNugget Calculator

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ebg13
aka a calculator

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arbol
The real question: Why are you eating at McDonalds?

