McDonald's CEO promises better food
money.cnn.com
money.cnn.com
Basically, I'll believe it when I see it.
I only go there to give my daughter some play time in their play area during the colder months.
McDonald's could regionalize their menu in the US but I don't see them doing that to serve more discerning customers.
There's probably a book to be written on the topic, but I think social media - Yelp, Instagram, Pinterest - are changing eating by giving good restaurants and food/beverage producers powerful word of mouth marketing. At least in the Detroit area, there's been a blossoming of really good restaurants (ranging from reasonably priced pubs to fine dining). When I go out to eat, even in an unfashionable suburb, I expect I can find a place with good craft beers and decent menu options with ingredients that would have been rare a decade ago.
More to the point with McDonald's, I suspect that it's harder and harder for them to buy mindshare in a world with all of these channels. They can't saturate Facebook/IG/Twitter like they saturated the TV and radio airwaves. It's harder and harder to prop up a mass-produced, mediocre product with a multi-billion dollar marketing budget.
> No, we don't currently sell veggie burgers. Although, we are always looking to evolve our menu.
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/do-yo...
That same car full will likely be passing up on Burger King if there are any other options, mind. IMO the BK Veggie is literally tasteless.
If you go to the burger chain Max instead, the price is +- 10 SEK, but the meat is organic, the bun is of high quality corn and the vegetables are always fresh. Plus, they don't store the burgers but make them at request. And they have won taste awards many times.
No wonder McDonalds is struggling when they are no where near the quality of other chains such as Max. And they should be worried, Max is going international.
My best Unix/FreeBSD admin came out of a crappy Verizon customer support job - he's been eager to learn, works hard, is appreciative and is really nice to be around.
I've visited many countries including the US, UK, France, Norway[0] and Singapore and I never fail to try out the local offering. But I've always[1] found the product inferior to the offering we get in Australia.
Look at their latest idea -- https://mcdonalds.com.au/create-your-taste -- and tell me that's not awesome.
[0] Curiously the poorest eating experience was in Norway despite topping the Big Mac Index[2]. I had a beef burger that was dripping with grease and a chicken burger that tasted like an oversized rubbery chicken nugget in a bun.
[1] Honorable mention goes to McDonald's in Hong Kong which had a Wasabi Filet-o-Fish limited time menu item. Seriously kick ass.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/mcdonalds-rolls-out-...
Indeed, and this is why I never go there except in one instance: I'm late for work and I need to eat a sausage and egg sandwich while driving, or be distracted by hunger until lunch.
I never go there in anticipation, and I never go there on the way home when I'm too lazy to cook, because there are so many better choices. I just never go there, except in the one scenario above.
When I was younger I used to go there a lot, and it actually tasted good. The patty looked like a hamburger patty I might grill at home, and the taste was juicy and, well, tasty.
Now all the taste and enjoyment has been synergized and efficientized out, and we're left with a grey, tasteless slab. Bleah. Who would want that, if they knew there was something better at comparable price elsewhere?
Instead of "innovating," they might look at just making their foundation menu tasty. Healthy ingredients that people want would be good too, but just start with tasty. And not "tasty in the test kitchen in Chicago," but tasty that survives by default in every McDonalds in existence.
If it's tasty without putting anything on it, then it's worth eating. If you hate it unless you put a bunch of vegetables and condiments on it, then it's defective.
You may actually prefer your burger with all that stuff on it, and that's fine. I'm just describing the minimal acceptable experience. If you have to (as opposed to want to) hide the burger to make it edible, then it's defective.
McDonalds burgers are defective.
I worked the grill back in the late 1980s when they had the old system of hand-grilling the burgers and assembling the sandwiches right there as the patties were pulled off.
A freshly-made plain double cheeseburger, right off the grill, was an incredible thing. It was damned good.
I'll be the first to say that the whole Modular Holding Cabinet system they changed to wrecked their products completely. But it also stopped waste, which was a massive downside to that old system. I'm sure over the decade the quality of the products has changed too, but knowing what went into a McDonald's burger back then they never tried to cut corners with substandard materials.
> A freshly-made plain double cheeseburger, right off the grill, was an incredible thing. It was damned good.
You're right, they were great. Now they're a disappointment at best.
> I worked the grill back in the late 1980s ...
And I ate what you cooked in the late 80s. And the late 70s. And the late 60s. Really great.
Harumph.
EDIT: I've removed my comments expressing my antiGMO beliefs because it's already turning into a whole thread-debate-topic on its own. All I really wanted to say here is that McD's has a huge influence on America's method of producing food. If they demand higher quality, it'll raise the mininum quality for the whole nation. I specifically think of things like beef & corn. That is all. Think whatever you will of GMOs, that debate seems just as volatile as debating Crossfit's health benefits. I hope that at least we can all agree that McD's was/is making near minimal quality of food and them raising the bar will raise the bar for all of USA.
If we didn't have GMOs we would have far more starving people than we currently do on this planet.
Altering the organism to improve its nutritional profile, such as by growing rice with vitamin A, that's good. I'm totally behind golden rice.
Altering the organism to resist herbicides or express pesticides that have potential toxicity to humans is a matter for some concern. The alteration itself may not even present a threat directly, but may enable an agricultural practice that causes harm.
For instance, herbicide resistant crops may absorb the herbicide, the safety of which was determined based primarily on inhalation and skin contact, and become the vector for an unforeseen risk from ingestion. Some people have made some provocative unproven claims that the symptoms of gluten sensitivity are actually adequately explained by glyphosate poisoning, mainly from crops that have been chemically dessicated prior to harvest. Obviously, glyphosate-resistant crops would not be dessicated pre-harvest with glyphosate, but they would have been sprayed with it during the growing season. I can't say for certain whether that particular chemical would be retained or degraded in any given plant. But I know that a tiny, tiny amount is present in much of what I eat. Is it dangerous? I don't know. I don't even know how I would prove it if it was. I always have the option to eat different foods, or differently cultivated foods (i.e. organic), if I so choose.
But the primary reason I'm mostly against GMO is the brutish nonsense surrounding patented seeds. The slow accumulation of possibly barely-toxic chemicals in my gut is less of a concern to me than the lawyer that orders a person to pay a license fee on each kernel of corn that he or she intends to plant. That guy is manipulating the entire market for food, changing the whole business model for farming, and that scares the insoluble fiber out of me.
The primary threat isn't in the genes; it's in the laws.
If they went organic grass feed beef one day they would need the entire 20 years of the entire US organic beef production to fill their first year needs.
When they roll out a new topping, like spinach, they have to build up reserves for months ahead of time so they don't affect the market.
The down side of being McDonalds is that they are so mind boggling huge that they can raise or lower the pirce of pretty much any vegtable by adding it to their menu.
The upside of being McDonalds is that they are so mind boggling huge that they can change the course of American farming by decreeing that they will only use certain types of vegetables or vegetables only produced under certain conditions.
Think about the intestinal fortitude you would need to change McDonalds menu in any drastic way. McDonalds is 4 things:
1) One of the largest derivatives players that isn't doing it as their main source of revenue, ie they aren't a hedge fund. You will directly affect the commodities market.
2) One of hte largest property holders in the world, if your bet goes wrong you'll screw up what is in effect one of the worlds largest REITS.
3) an employer of a mind boggling large number of people. Make the wrong move and you just put a alrge portion of the lower wage community out of a job.
4) a company worth 94 billion by market cap. When you run a company that large you don't get to make brash decisions without the boards approval.
So if you make the decision to improve the quality of food you serve, you'll have a few side effects.
1) you'll shock the commodities markets, maybe this is good or bad, not sure. But it will take you a minimum of 3 years I'm imagining before you can see meaningful change as food contracts are usually long term.
2) you'll run a very real risk of pushing someone else out of the market as there is only so much of each food substance produced. ie if McDonalds announced they were only going to use a better quality of chicken and beef then the first thing I'd do is short chipotle, and short them hard, as if a supplier has the choice of upsetting McDonals or Chipotle, they will short change Chipotle every single time.
3) you run the risk of alienating your bread and butter customer, lower income people who are price sensitive to hamburger prices going from $1.50 to $3.
4) You are a dividend paying company, which means the market doesn't expect growth in any area expect your dividend. Fail in this regard and you will be punished heavily. If you fail in your better food quality push you may just shave off 20 Billion in market cap.
TL/DR it takes alot of courage to change the MCDonalds menu!!
It is really hard for me to understand this line of reasoning. I lived in Canada as a foreign student a few years ago and it was way cheaper to cook for yourself than to eat at a McDonald. Maybe the situation is different in US, but I doubt it.
McDonald's isn't cheaper than cooking for yourself, but time constraints (consider a single parent with multiple jobs) and/or the up-front costs when bits of your cooking infrastructure is lost, broken, damaged may make the marginal cost of getting the next meal from McDonald's cheaper than the cost of repair plus the next meal. Given that the poor may have limited access to additional credit and litte-no reserves, that marginal cost difference may make McDonald's the only affordable choice, even though the long-term cost is higher.
Perhaps they should phase it in then? It's not like A/B testing and exploratory markets are not a well known practice.
In fact, that'd be the best way to trial it, and build up the supply chain - prove it works and helps build anticipation if the offering is really well received.
Furthermore, if it was an option, perhaps that would allow them to further phase it in.
Change doesn't need to be done all at once. True, it's not like random small chain restaurant deciding to do any of the above, given McD's franchise model and volume, but it's by no means as daunting a task as you describe.
I don't know for youngsters, but I go to McDonalds for a blend of 'I still like the taste of this unhealthy thing' and childhood memories of the glorious 80s.
Nobody. But plenty of people don't go to McDonald's due to its bad food.
It's not even about the unhealthiness of it, but its low quality. McD's around me have the shittiest meat ever cooked while their prices are still not very competitive compared to good, tasty burgers in proper restaurants (around 8€ for a menu in both). McD's is losing to proper restaurants/bars (which aren't really their competitors but actually compete against them) and to other fast food places.
The only advantage McDonald's offers in my country is they're open 24h on weekends so you can eat it after a night out, where the shitty taste is obscured by the client's drunkness... and kebab places are slowly taking their piece of the cake there too.
I prefer McDonalds when my only other obvious choice is a Chinese xiao chi that might be using recycled gutter oil. The xiao chi will be tastier, but I can't really afford to risk my life like that.
It's actually pretty tasty... https://mcdonalds.com.au/menu/grand-angus
When I first tasted an UmamiBurger the first thing I thought was "wow, this has the mouthfeel and intense flavor of a big mac, but it's way better".
Replacing whatever meat blend is used with "Angus" is unlikely to improve the flavor -- who cares about uniformity and marbling in ground beef!
Things like never serving unripe green tomatoes or wilted lettuce would go a long way, as would avoiding serving burgers that have been sitting around too long.
I imagine that if prepared fresh (like Chipotle is) nearly anything from McDonalds would taste significantly better.
Even though I don't personally like their food, they are not a company that I would bet against in the long run.
Their mission is not to serve the best meal, or the cheapest meal, or even the best quality per unit price. They aim to provide a uniform, consistent customer experience, at every point of sale, around the entire world. As a result, their first priority is to always protect the brand.
As a result, the food itself is almost inconsequential. They could buy their beef from anyone that can raise enough cattle to make it worth the corporate buyer's salary. But on the other side, they are the only company that can sell the "McDonald's Experience".
That's why you don't bet against McDonald's. They have removed the element of uncertainty from eating at a new (to you) restaurant. If you go to any city in the world that has a McDonald's, you can eat there with the psychological assurance that the food there will be no worse than the McDonald's in your very own home town. But it will also be no better. That's the tradeoff.
As a result, every other restaurant has to exceed McDonald's in some specific niche of the market if they want customers. If McDonald's is starting to focus on quality, every place that competes with them by having slightly better ingredients had better take notice and respond.
Ah, but that was just for the corporate owned stores. Franchisees, which are 4/5 of the operations, make their own salary decisions.
They sell milk and OJ and I often buy that from them for a light meal on the go.
That's my complaint. I don't mind subpar food once in a great while. But I went there for lunch a few weeks ago and it was over $8 and I felt nasty and was hungry a couple of hours later. I could have gone to the grocery store deli and gotten a hot lunch combo for $6. Or a tasty burrito from the local Mexican place for $3.50 and an iced tea from the convenience store for $1.
In short, it's not just that their food isn't that great (it's not)... it's that it's too expensive to be that bad.
The McD app has coupons that can get you some decent quantities for food for pretty cheap, or at least it did when it first came out. I haven't used it in a while so they might have cut back on some of the deals they were offering.
It was a double quarter pounder and was over $5 alone. The medium shake was another 2.50+ and with tax it was well over $8.00.
The point is... it was too much money for the quality of the food. There are better alternatives.
A cheeseburger, water and small fries is < $3, and that keeps me going for several hours from lunch to dinner. I don't go often, but go specifically for pricing. If I'm planning to spend > $6 on a meal, I go elsewhere.
When I was an idiot, I used to eat a lot at McDonalds. I had such a high metabolism that I could just burn off the calories without even trying, then when I got older, that didn't work any longer.
It's pretty easy to blow past 3000 calories if you eat more than 2x at McD's.