Fast food is too expensive.
During covid Taco Bell ran a special "At Home Taco Bar". My kids talk about it to this day as the greatest thing ever.
The At Home Taco Bar, which serves 6, will be available for at participating restaurants nationwide and includes 8 flour tortillas, 12 Crunchy Taco shells, 6 oz. of nacho chips, seasoned beef, shredded lettuce, refried beans, nacho cheese sauce, cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, reduced-fat sour cream, Hot Sauce packets and napkins for $25
No joke, it was enough food for all 5 of us for like 3 meals. The boys built their own double decker tacos and my daughter polished off the beans with a spoon. But back then it cost maybe $35 to get everyone their specific orders at Taco Bell. Whataburger breakfast for everyone was about $25 because the chicken biscuits were a little over $2 each.
Cut to today and it costs an average of $45 for 5 of us to eat at Taco Bell (Husband does not like.), $55 for 6 of us at McDonalds, and easily over $65 at Whataburger. These days we get one or two take out meals a week and one of them will be pizza because I can get 4 pizzas under $40 picked up around here.
Don't get me started on "nicer" places either. Panda Express runs us about $60-80 to get enough food for everyone and I still make the rice at home (I have better rice). We get that once a quarter, maybe (It's also far away). Fried chicken will run us $60 easy. And everything gets eaten. A sit down restaurant like Mexican food or Chilis? lol $120 easy. We don't do that often ever.
Needless to day I cook 90% of what we eat around here. One of the kids favorites, and what's for dinner tonight, is "katsu". Now, I'm not always able to destroy the entire kitchen by hand battering and frying expensive chicken breasts. Our version of cheap katsu is buying a bag of frozen breaded chicken sandwich patties, frying those, and cutting them in strips before drizzling them with korean bbq sauce. It looks like katsu, and I use the good rice, and pan fry some bok choy and cabbage etc with it. But it only costs me $6 for a bag of 6 patties, two bags feeds everyone. The rice and veggies add what, $4?. Everyone gets completely full quickly for under $20.
It's not as fast as going through the drive thru but costs half as much to fry stuff myself at home. And yes, food you cook yourself tastes like nothing but that just means I can get another 4 years out of these jeans