Food: McDonald’s New Growth Strategy with My Response

Earlier on LinkedIn, I found an article that discussed McDonald’s latest growth strategy. Instead of pointing to that article, I will link a similar one that summarizes the event. For myself though, I found the areas being discussed pretty worthless and will go into my thoughts here.

The upcoming announced strategy is called NEXT that will “drive growth and improve restaurant economics.” Around this notion are what they are calling the Four Pillars:

• Menu innovation
• Connecting with consumers
• Improving productivity and efficiency at restaurants
• Finding new ways to provide hospitality with diners with automation

Their so-called chief restaurant experience officer went so far as to say, “We’re creating feel-good moments for customers and crew by making our restaurants easier to run and more enjoyable to visit.”

So in reading these “strategies” to me sounds like typical marketing/corporate speak that will do nothing for what customers actually want. Here’s the problem. Fast food mostly has been the working class version of food where people needed something quick, on the go, reasonably priced and accessible. Most people don’t really enjoy going to a fast food place these days especially after the pandemic. Maybe the only group of people who might have enjoyed going to a fast food spot were teenagers because these spots were cheap and accessible from their schools (walking distance) where they could hang out by ordering a drink and sipping on it while doing homework.

However, I would say over the past 15 years or so, these four pillars, the real ones, slowly have been eroding away. Quality, which never had been something associated to fast food, has slipped to an all time low with the increase in processing to keep up margins. Speed has decreased where none of this stuff feels fast anymore. Cheap has become a distant memory even before the pandemic, partly because of increasing minimum wage. And availability/accessibility has declined when the pandemic slaughtered many restaurants and cut hours. The only real reason to go to a fast food restaurant anymore, at least for me, is to avoid cooking (i.e. I’m out of ingredients and/or feel too lazy).

With McDonald’s in particular, I’ve never associated them as anything except near the bottom of the totem pole for fast food. I grew up with them as something I associate when my mother did an awful job at dinner or my parents were lazy for the night. Maybe I might go there if I was at the mall (back when they had one) and occasionally I might try to get a toy (although I thought Wendy’s and Burger King had better extras since the Happy Meal were generally trash). But I could always rely on them for being cheap, around the corner and serving a particular niche for my taste buds.

Even if it’s true that competitors are updating their menus, all it means is a few different ingredients that are experimental and/or charged even more. For instance, I saw some wretched looking chicken Mexican pizza at Taco Bell recently that I wouldn’t touch with an aircraft carrier. Even before AI slop became an internet meme, one could say numerous fast food restaurants or maybe just American restaurants got into this business of horrible concoctions which pushed people here into both the whole foodie craze as well as various health problems like morbid obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Now, I added the Big Arch here as an example of what might be to come. I didn’t do a proper review of the Big Arch because there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s basically a slightly upscaled Big Mac that taste worse in some areas like the sauce. And here’s the problem: I don’t really want anything different from these places. Even with the downsizing of portions (which I think is a conspiracy to curb American morbid obesity), the real problem to me is that I don’t want much change from these places. I miss the older versions that I grew up with.

The other night I went out and got McDonald’s where I had one of my standard orders that I’ve been doing since grade school. Basically, chicken McNuggets, x2 Cheeseburgers, Fries and a drink (Dr. Pepper). This time I added a baked strawberry cream pie. The place I ordered from is up the street and I’ve been going since I’ve moved here. And this became the 2nd time in recent memory where they forgot the sauce for the McNuggets. Luckily, I have my own BBQ in the refrigerator but how can you mess up missing the sauce when it’s clearly part of the digital order? I’ve got the receipt in my inbox too. Do you think that makes me want to return ever? Same thing with Arby’s from a few months ago where they forgot my curly fries.

In the past, missing an item or two was somewhat forgivable because fast food was cheap. These days it isn’t. Gas cost an exorbitant amount thanks to a certain AntiChrist figure lying to the public in the White House at the moment. And food only keeps going up in cost. But if take out is the only real reason to go to fast food but the quality is bad along with the prices, why should I ever want to go anymore? I certainly won’t eat inside because it’s not only depressing but you get a load of weird characters at these places.

I think people like this jackoff in charge of the restaurant experience are full of shit in this industry. They probably have some MBA and slithered up the corporate totem pole by nefarious means. If you want my business, you need to go back to the true pillars of fast food that I presented earlier. Either serve nostalgia in the exact same manner (especially prices, quality, service and accessibility) or forget it. In the end, I think a lot of these places are going to go bankrupt just because people won’t be able to afford going out anymore. I’m already seeing it with some locations of Carl’s Jr in California. And Del Taco got sold off from Jack-in-the-Box. What other casualties are we going to see before things revert?

One last comment I have is that in talking about Del Taco, I did learn that the original Naugles Tacos & Burgers, which in the 80s merged with Del Taco, still exist over in two locations in Orange County. Similarly, Pioneer Chicken, which to me is far better than KFC, has a spot too in Boyle Heights. And if you remember Bob’s Boy, there’s one over in Burbank (although there seems to be a lot more in Michigan). The point here is perhaps this will be the true end game for all these franchises where they eventually shrink back down to a select few locations that do well and maintain their original tradition. Maybe the largest spots like the McDonalds or Taco Bells will continue but I think all these massive corporations that run food will end up getting destroyed by private equity or internally when their shareholders revolt. There’s definitely some lessons that can be learned in studying the history of this industry, which is more reliable than tech.