McDonald’s is increasingly using an AI-driven pricing system to recommend menu prices to U.S. franchisees based on local conditions and millions of transactions.
The technology turns a familiar business practice—local pricing—into a much more granular optimization problem. That can improve margins, but it also creates reputational and regulatory risk when nearby stores produce visibly different prices.
For consumers, the important distinction is that this is not necessarily real-time surge pricing. It is algorithmic guidance about what each market may tolerate, which can still produce substantial differences from one restaurant to another.