McDonald 's has long been an American restaurant favorite. However, in 2003 sales figures showed the fast food empire was suffering to maintain their status.
Stagnant sales, rising costs, failed attempts at new menu items, falling stock price and a lagging quality and service rating by customers all have left the restaurant chain in decline.
What’s the Problem?
At the top for so long, McDonald’s has now found itself lacking in the areas it has long prided itself on: quality and service, according to customer surveys. Drive-thru windows are too slow, improper staffing make “rush hours” more bogged down and their products aren’t as consistent as before. However, that’s not the only reason for the company’s situation. McDonald’s is also
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This would help combat competitors creating new, attractive items that lure new customers. Healthy food items like salads or gourmet items like coffee are examples.
Negative effects of permitting such control could devalue McDonald’s as it would bring inconsistency in the menu at each store. Customers wouldn’t know what to expect on the menu at each location and may bring their business to more reliable competitors.
Another piece of this strategy would include a focus on pricing, a major area of concern for franchisers. A strategy that allows for flexible prices at stores would help stop losses and could bring back value to underpriced items cheapened by too low of pricing. By permitting stores to set their own prices for products, they can eliminate losses due to under pricing. It can also help to return value to items viewed with less value.
The repercussions of putting pricing in the hands of franchisers could be prices set too high to bring in more profits. Inconsistency again would likely cause customers to have a distrust of the store. Different pricing could cause wars within the McDonald’s family between stores with differing prices.
A separate strategy would be to change the positioning of McDonald’s, helping customers to realize the distinctive capabilities of its fast food joint: locations around nearly every corner in nearly every town, as well as global locations; multiple mature products; and one of the
If the minimum wage goes up, this would affect profits as well as number of employees working at the restaurant. Currently the firm is able to hire a large team of servers at each location. This allows them to cater to each customer's needs and to complete orders on
For instance, the increasing preference of consumers towards healthy food made the restaurant add healthier food items to its menu. Similarly it has to add new products for different seasons, for examples hot coffee in winter and milkshakes in summer.
McDonald’s has been in business since 1955. Through many years of great strategic and financial planning, it has become one of the most successful food chains in the world. In order to continue its great success, McDonald’s must continue to adapt to change. In this paper we will discuss the strategic and financial planning that would be necessary to keep McDonald’s on top of the food chain.
McDonald’s has been a staple in the restaurant business for as long as most of us can remember. It has achieve around the globe, but not without overcoming a fair amount of challenges in its pursuit of the title “King of Fast Food”.
Macdonald’s offers a strict, but mutually beneficial franchising and licensing agreements that have a term of 20 years (McDonald’s, 2014). Before an individual obtains a franchise or a licensing opportunity, a careful scrutiny of the restaurant location must conform to expectation of future growth of the business. The scrutiny ensures long-term profitability of the restaurant. The process of setting up a restaurant is very thorough. The franchising and licensing agreement allows the corporation to have enough cash for further expansion. Expansion creates dominance and goes a long way to stamp authority as a
McDonaldization effects all aspects of today’s society—even the venues we often overlook. Two examples of some commonly overlooked McDonaldized venues are the Kimmel Center and the Hard Rock Cafe. Both of these venues emphasize the McDonald elements of success according to George Ritzer: efficiency, Calculability, predictability, and control. (14, Ritzer). Although these places may feel like a luxurious break from the everyday fast food trip, they are not all that much different.
The investment strategy of McDonald’s UK has changed notably over the last decade. During the 1990s, McDonald’s actively opened a large number of restaurants in order to grow market presence and increase market share. In recent years, however, McDonald’s has taken a much more consolidated approach by focusing on fewer restaurant openings and instead investing in the re-imaging of its current estate. This investment strategy is intended to maintain the perception of McDonald’s as a modern, progressive company and enable us to upgrade the customer experience and maintain market share in an ever-increasing competitive
In the article “The Franchisees Are Not Lovin’ It,” the authors, Gruley and Patton, discuss the difficulties of the McDonalds franchise, the struggles of the franchisees, and the inability to solve these problems. The article goes on to talk about how McDonalds needs to get back to basics, just as they say themselves. Yet, they continue to make the menu more complex by the constant introduction of new foods. They are getting away from their identity as a burger joint. As a result they are closing restaurants and are continuing to experience declining revenue. McDonalds isn’t what they used to be and something needs to be done to improve the well-being of the company, the franchisees, the employees, and most importantly the customers.
McDonalds is less of a restaurant, and more of a vicious entity. This friendly restaurant is making its way into every aspect of our society with poorer education, horrible customer service, and so on. The problem being that our culture is embracing these traits and behaviors of McDonalds, society is becoming lazier and focusing on quantity instead of quality. There are four dimensions of McDonaldization that highlight how it is impacting societies worldwide: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Efficiency is getting from one place to another the quickest way possible, calculability is when bigger quantities are better, predictability is when things are the same in terms of taste etc.
McDonalds is by far one of the largest and most influential fast food chains in the world. This one corporation can change and influence a very large amount of the United States economy all on its own. If McDonalds were to go bankrupt and close all of its restaurants then millions of people would lose their jobs. McDonalds provides health care and other basic benefits to all of its full time employees, and without these benefits then these people would go uninsured and could not make it. McDonalds also makes up a very large amount of capital put into the United States economy by its customers. Many people who cannot afford to go to a nice sit-down restaurant opt to the much cheaper alternative and decide to go to McDonalds to buy food. A large
I, Tayneata M. Starr, decided to discuss McDonald’s for this strategy report. McDonald’s began in the 1940’s as a “mom & pop” bar-b-que diner in San Bernardino, California by Dick and Mac McDonald (“McDonald’s History,” n.d.). In December of 1948, McDonald’s was rebranded as a self-serve drive-in restaurant (“McDonald’s History,” n.d.). The original menu was comprised of nine items, with the staple product being the “15-cent hamburger” (“McDonald’s History,” n.d.). Today, McDonald’s is a publicly traded organization that operates in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada, and Latin America (“MCD Profile,” n.d.). As of December 2015, McDonald’s has 36, 525 restaurants in operation, offering products such as soft drinks, hamburgers,
McDonalds has been around since 1940, when it was created by Nick and Mac McDonald in Bernardino, California. Since then McDonalds has only grown around the world in popularity and business. There are currently more than 33 thousand restaurants around the world in 119 countries. The chain has remarkably gone form offering just a few items on its menu to a wide range of over a 145 diverse items on its menu. Needless to say McDonalds has embedded itself within the world’s society. The way McDonalds runs its business has many different components. These different items include geography of a location, Weber’s model, development, and mass consumption.
The weaknesses of McDonalds include competitors and nutrition concerns. McDonalds failed attempt at pizza limited their ability to compete with fast food pizza franchise. Price competition with the competitors is also resulting in lower revenue for McDonalds. McDonalds also lacks variation in seasonal products that they offer. Another weakness, which has actually stemmed from McDonalds large size, is a lack of personal touch or connections. McDonalds has a very high turnover rate which in the end elevates the cost of training staff. There are also concerns that franchised operations negatively affect the food quality. McDonalds has also had a lack of innovation.
Since each restaurant is franchised then there is a miniature hierarchy inside the main McDonalds hierarchy. This is very different to how Thomas Cook works they have a much larger but flatter hierarchy.
Since McDonald’s is the most well know fast food chain in the world with a market cap of 69.35 billion, brand recognition is their biggest strength. The secret of McDonald’s success is its willingness to innovate and maintain consistency in the operation of its many outlets. In recent years McDonald’s has introduced Premium Salads, Snack Wraps, fresh Apple Dippers in the United States, and Corn Cups in China. Also, McDonald 's products are priced so low that economic conditions are almost insignificant.