McDonald’s has rolled out an AI pricing model built with Tiger Analytics that analyzes transaction data and scrapes competitor menus to calculate a willingness-to-pay metric for each restaurant location. According to Reuters, the algorithm has produced price spreads of up to 21% for a Big Mac between locations three kilometers apart.

McDonald’s describes the system as advisory, but the platform also tracks when franchisees deviate from the recommended prices, and that pricing compliance feeds directly into business audits and the renewal of partner contracts. Scaling the approach across roughly 14,000 US restaurants has caught the attention of antitrust regulators, who are now examining whether this kind of algorithmic pricing violates competition law.