McDonald’s faces lawsuit over alleged AI-assisted pricing

The filing, dated October 2, 2026, names Illinois resident Michael Thomas as plaintiff and McDonald’s USA, LLC as defendant.[1] Thomas says he regularly bought menu items at multiple McDonald’s restaurants and paid different prices for the same items.[1] The complaint alleges that McDonald’s and independent franchisees conspired to fix prices using algorithms trained on nonpublic data.[3] Thomas filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.[1]

The complaint alleges McDonald’s has owned and operated a centralized machine-learning pricing engine since at least 2019.[1] It says the engine takes in data from millions of daily transactions at corporate and franchised restaurants, including franchisees’ confidential sales data.[1] The engine allegedly recommends menu prices for individual restaurants and estimates what their likely customers are willing to pay.[1] The complaint also alleges McDonald’s tracks franchisees’ departures from those recommendations in detail.[1]

The complaint alleges that algorithms trained on nonpublic data tied price increases to the actions of competing franchisees.[1] It also alleges McDonald’s required franchisees to use its approved pricing consultant and tools beginning in January 2026.[1] The suit brings a claim under the Illinois Antitrust Act.[1] Thomas seeks treble damages, litigation costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees.[1] Reuters reported that he seeks to represent potentially millions of McDonald’s customers.[3]

McDonald’s called the allegations speculative and uninformed.[3] The company says its pricing recommendation tool does not set or change prices, and that franchisees decide whether to use its recommendations.[4] McDonald’s also says it does not use dynamic pricing.[4] The complaint is at its earliest stage, according to the attorneys who wrote a Kelley Drye advisory.[2]