The 'Small Order' Fee At McDonald's That Customers Are Not Happy About (And How To Remove It)

In many ways, apps have made ordering fast food easier and better than ever, that is until you see something like McDonald's' small order fee. It's unfortunately the kind of sight many people have become used to. Apps and online ordering platforms offer us special promotions, and make placing a food order almost effortless, but at the end there are "service" fees, or "convenience" fees, or whatever other euphemistic terms these companies have come up with. And the small order fee at McDonald's might just be one of the most baffling to customers.

To be clear, the small order fee at McDonald's isn't something that can show up on every order, it's only a charge you'll see when getting delivery. McDonald's notes that the fee exists on its website, but doesn't offer specifics on how much the fee is, but it can seemingly vary from $2 to $3.50 or more depending on your location. The threshold for what constitutes "small" is also not specified, but $10 seems to be the standard minimum you must get above to avoid the fee when ordering delivery.

Of course people aren't happy about seeing this on their bill, or about how McDonald's expects you to get rid of it. Recent Reddit threads complaining about the small order fee have some people mocking it, saying, "You're not spending enough. Here, let us fix that for you," and "This is why I stopped getting delivery. Every time I swear there's a new fee." And the advice for removing the fee from the company doesn't help, as McDonald's suggests you can remove the fee by spending more money.

So McDonald's essentially says you can avoid that small order fee by not placing a small order. Helpful. But why does that charge exist in the first place?

Well, this is one fee that at least has some clear reasoning behind it, although how justified it is will be up to you. The small order fee only shows up on delivery because that service has additional costs, and if you only order a small amount of food, the chain isn't making enough money on the order to justify the cost of delivery. McDonald's is far from the only place that does this. DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub all have small order fees of their own, although the minimum order and charges vary by company. And remember that despite offering orders through its own app, McDonald's doesn't actually do the delivery itself, as McDonald's McDelivery is handled by third-party delivery companies, primarily DoorDash.

It may be frustrating to see, but delivery adds a lot of costs for a business, and they need to be covered to justify the order. The most obvious is the delivery driver, but also fuel, and maintenance on vehicles, whether the company is paying for that, or the driver's salary needs to be increased so they can cover the expense. Normally a delivery fee would cover those costs, but the cost of a driver's hourly wage and fuel doesn't change no matter the size of your order, so when you order less, McDonald's or any other business needs to find a way to make up the difference anyway. Maybe the massively profitable McDonald's could swallow the expense, but you don't become that big by giving away free meals.