McDonald’s has been sued in federal court in Chicago in a proposed nationwide class action alleging the company illegally coordinates menu prices across its franchised and company-owned restaurants through an AI-powered pricing system, Reuters reported Monday. The complaint, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeks to represent potentially millions of McDonald’s customers.
The suit, brought by DeKalb, Illinois, customer Michael Thomas, accuses McDonald’s of violating federal antitrust law by conspiring with its independent franchisees to fix prices using algorithms trained on nonpublic data. It alleges that since at least 2019 the company has enforced a “coercive price-fixing agreement” in which corporate and franchised stores feed confidential transaction data into a centralized machine-learning “pricing engine” that generates recommended prices for menu items at individual restaurants.
According to the complaint, about 95% of McDonald’s roughly 14,000 US restaurants are independently owned, and those owners are competitors who should set prices on their own. The plaintiff says the engine is programmed with rules that tie one restaurant’s price increases to whether other McDonald’s restaurants have already raised prices on the same item. The complaint also alleges that McDonald’s tracks franchisees who deviate from the recommendations and weighs “pricing non-compliance” in renewal and expansion decisions. It seeks treble damages and an injunction.
McDonald’s denies the claims. In a statement, the company called the allegations speculative and uninformed and said, “AI does not set the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item.” It used the same line in an October 1 post that says franchisees “independently set menu prices at their restaurants” and that a pricing recommendation is “not a mandate.”
The complaint draws heavily on a September 29 Reuters investigation into the chain’s AI pricing push. Reuters reported that the engine analyzes data from millions of daily transactions to generate what McDonald’s calls “the optimal price” for each item at each location, factoring in an estimate of “customer willingness to pay.” Five store owners told Reuters the company pressured them to use the tools, and since January McDonald’s business standards have required franchisees to be “constructively engaging with McDonald’s approved Pricing Consultant and Tools.”
The case could test how antitrust law applies to algorithmic pricing inside a franchise system. Some experts told Reuters in September that McDonald’s legal risk is low because courts have given brands wide latitude over franchisee pricing. The complaint cites a 2025 Justice Department filing arguing that a formula used to fix recommended or “starting point” prices can violate the Sherman Act even when final prices vary. The case is Thomas v. McDonald’s USA, LLC, No. 1:26-cv-12149.
Sources
- Reuters: McDonald’s hit with class action over menu prices (October 5, 2026)
- Complaint: Thomas v. McDonald’s USA, LLC, N.D. Ill. No. 1:26-cv-12149 (PDF)
- Reuters: Inside McDonald’s push to have AI price your Big Mac (September 29, 2026)
- McDonald’s: Separating Fact from Fiction: AI Does Not Set Prices at McDonald’s (October 1, 2026)
- PYMNTS/CPI: McDonald’s Hit With Antitrust Suit Over AI-Assisted Menu Pricing