McDonald's Reward System Just Nerfed Everyone's Points: Here's the Details

The McDonald’s rewards system is pretty straightforward. For every dollar you spend on McDonald’s food, you earn 100 points, which you can use to unlock free rewards, including snacks and burgers. However, they just revamped their rewards menu system, changing all the point menus, while also adding a straight discount option that makes the system a little fairer to vegetarian customers. Here’s what you need to know.

Videos by Sporked

What happened to everyone’s points?

On May 4th, McDonald’s changed the point values for their rewards menu, bumping up most of their prices by around 500 points. For example, you used to be able to get a free McChicken, Cheeseburger (the best McDonald’s burger), or Sausage Biscuit with 1,500 points, but they’ve now been bumped up to 2,000 points. So, it’ll now take you an extra five dollars of spending to unlock them. The new price list is:

1,500 points: Hash Browns, Apple Pie, Vanilla Cone, or small Premium Roast Coffee.
2,000 points: McChicken, Cheeseburger, or Sausage Biscuit.
3,500 points: Medium Fries, 6 pc. Chicken McNuggets, Sausage Burrito, large Iced Coffee, or a Sausage McGriddles.
4,000 points: Get $3 off of your order.
5,000 points: large Fries, large Frappé, Sausage McMuffin with Egg, Filet-O-Fish, or Hotcakes.
7,000 points: Happy Meal, 10 pc. Chicken McNuggets, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Sausage Egg and Cheese McMuffin, McFlurry, or a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit.

So, if you do the math, that means that you’ll have to spend 70 bucks before you can unlock an Egg McMuffin, which doesn’t sound like the greatest value. Overall, I’m not loving it.

How is this good for vegetarians?

One of the problems with the system was that the rewards only covered a small portion of the menu, with only a few items being available for vegetarians to choose from. The only good thing about the new menu seems to be that earning 4,000 points will now allow you to take $3 off your order, which means that you can now discount an item from McDonald’s vegetarian menu.

Although, we have to add that McDonald’s doesn’t have the best vegetarian menu around. But I guess any good news is better than none.