Hacker News Reader

What I find most interesting is that in Switzerland McDonalds workers make ~$25/hr and have great benefits however the food was about the same price as it is at my local McDonalds maybe a 10-15% difference. How is that profitable over there but it would not be profitable in the US?

View on HN

You must be misremembering the price disparity. A quick Google shows that Switzerland is home to "the most expensive big Mac in the world"[1] at 6.50CHF. Almost double the US's average of $3.99.

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-big-mac-most-expen...

There's a more current "Big Mac Index" here, Switzerland seems to still be on top:

https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index

Wikipedia has a decent explainer too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

Nice! Thanks. Looks like my numbers were a bit off due to being out of date. To anyone who wants to know, currently the Swiss Big Mac is 35.4% more expensive than the US one.

So pay is ~100% higher while food cost is ~35% higher. Assuming a $12.00/hr average wage in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com