In late May and early June 2026, social media users claimed that the fast-food chain McDonald's planned to charge drive-thru customers a $1 "convenience fee."
Users' posts purportedly featured authentic photos of McDonald's drive-thru lanes with signs notifying customers of the new fee.
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(@brandilwells accessed via X)
Others shared the rumor elsewhere on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived). Snopes readers also searched our website to verify whether the claim was true.
In short, this rumor was false. The claim originated with posts featuring artificial intelligence-generated images of McDonald's drive-thru signs. McDonald's did not announce a $1 "convenience fee" for drive-thru customers, nor did any credible news outlets report such a change.
Snopes emailed McDonald's Corp. to request a statement and official confirmation that the rumor was false. We will update this article if we receive a response.
Researching the rumor
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo, as well as reverse image searches, mostly located Facebook users discussing and promoting the rumor. The Bing and Google searches displayed AI-generated answers that inaccurately confirmed the story about a new $1 convenience fee, citing unverified social media posts as credible sources.
As of this writing, the Next Top Virals Facebook page, which contained a seemingly endless number of posts displaying AI-generated content, hosted the oldest known post promoting the rumor. That May 29 post (archived) featured a sharp image that users subsequently reposted. Its high quality suggested the user originated both the rumor and the AI-generated visual.
(Next Top Virals accessed via Facebook)
We contacted the Next Top Virals page manager via Messenger and the listed email address to ask if they made up the rumor about the drive-thru fee and await a reply.
Confirming AI usage
A scan of the image with Google's SynthID Detector displayed a result saying that "digital analysis indicates that most or all of this image was edited or generated with Google AI." The tool specializes in detecting images and videos created using Google's AI tools.
Other recent posts on the Next Top Virals page also featured false rumors with fake images of McDonald's restaurants. For example, some AI-generated images showed signage asking customers for tips at drive-thru windows. Other fake images showed inauthentic media outlet chyrons about police arresting angry customers who employees either shorted on Chicken McNuggets or provided the wrong dipping sauce.
For further reading, we previously investigated whether an image showed a McDonald's worker chained by the ankle to a food prep station.