They wanted to get people dependant on eating their crap every single day. They view not just each other as competition, but the concept of you cooking for yourself as direct competition for their crap. They want you sitting in their drive through 3 meals a day. They don't want you to even consider using your own kitchen.

Their food is designed to trigger an addictive response. The food is cheap too produce, and really not very appealing to even look at. And yet, drive by any random McDonald's at 1030 am and it will be 4 cars deep in the drive through.

Now that an entire generation and their kids are hooked, they can raise the prices until people can just barely afford it.