- MCD
- SBUX
Fast-food chain McDonald’s (MCD) announced the launch of its new “NEXT” initiative at its investor day, promising to provide better food and improve customer experiences at their locations.
The 8:30 Hosts Julie Hyman, Jake Conley, and Pras Subramanian discuss what this investment may ultimately look like.
Maybe you might use your AI agent to order you some
uh, McDonald’s. I don’t know. I like that.
I like that. At least that’s what McDonald’s would like you to do. Maybe, you know, it’s investor today just launched today in Chicago. Uh the burger chain reveals it’s next strategy, right? So that’s basically a couple financial metrics here, right? They want to have 0.5 percentage points of market share gains in both chicken and beverage, uh because they already lead in beef. It’s about 2030. Uh they want to have operating margins in the low to mid 50s, which I think is pretty good uh by 2030 as well. The Make It Golden plan, a system-wide commitment to elevate the customer, uh and you know, kind of elevate experience through food and hospitality, they say, a lot of big words here, but Julie, you flagged this earlier too, like they’re going to spend 8.5 billion to help franchisees modernize these restaurants. So, I think that’s that’s a good move. We’re going to hear more at 9:30 about potentially new food items, new uh promotions. I think that’s what the consumers are most interested in buying. But from a investor point of view, I mean the stock is a dog this year, unfortunately. Yeah.
It’s right. down 10% wants to fix and same store sales up barely a percent last quarter. so
Much needed.
And we we should point out also, part of that stock performance is not isolated to McDonald’s. A lot of the businesses in that same category have been struggling for a long time. Um you look at uh Starbucks trying to turn around under Brian Nickel. That stock has been struggling for a bit. It’s kind of the same story of how do you get people in the store when that’s just becoming something that people do less and less and less. How do you innovate enough to get people back inside spending money, spending time in your locations?
Well, it seems like that’s one of the things that McDonald’s is going to be spending this money on, right? Sort of like bringing back some of the like when I was a kid, we would go to McDonald’s and go to the playground and like birthday parties were there.
Why is the flurry machine always broken?
I mean imagine when we were kids like we’re going to eat at McDonald’s today. like we would go crazy. I don’t know if kids have that same maybe they do, but um, you know, it’s funny they they’re going to go back remember we’re talking about this, they they have all the digital kiosks. People hate the digital kiosks. They want to talk to a human.
That’s right.
They want to talk to a human.
Yeah, it’s just easier. It’s annoying to do this big screen. Oh, you can tap your phone and you can have your loyalty program connected. but it’s like, you know what, just I want to talk to a human being. I want a burger, I don’t want onions, I want cheese, I want, you know, they want that experience.
Yeah.
Maybe that’s what’s happening here.
