The Fast Food Chain Industry- McDonald’s Corporation

Yatin Jaisingh (Lead Consultant, Thoughtworks)

1. Introduction:

Have you ever visited a foodcourt of a mall or a commercial strip? If you have, you cannot miss the different Fast Food chains that have flocked these locations. The mall owners, airports, commercial establishments are steadily increasing the percentage of retail square footage at any given property dedicated to food and beverage. Around 40% of the consumers that visit the malls, do that primarily for the reason for the food choices available in such spaces. [1]

The last few years have seen a changing dynamics in the fast food chain industry and an explosion in the diversity of available choices in terms of concepts as well as food options. The rapidly changing dynamics and evolution reflects that the industry has been responsive to change in customer tastes & experience preferences.

The picture is clear as a Crystal- There are still abundant opportunities available though every new development or evolution has its own challenge, but there are entrepreneurs and wise men out there to make the best of the available opportunities and still making it possible to make profits in the face of these challenges.

Quick Service Restaurants:

A Quick service restaurant is a segment of the restaurant industry which is know to provide a fast service, has a limited menu and serves food at a low price. Such establishments are also commonly known as the fast food restaurants. The major players in this segment include McDonald’s, burger King, KFC, Pizza hut, Subway, taco bell etc. to name a few. This segment is also known as Limited Service Restaurant which does not provide a table service.

The United States is known as the founder of the modern day fast food restaurants as majority of the brands in this segment originated in US and now have footprints all over the globe. As of 2019, all the states in the US have this segment where California accounted for the highest number 31,500 units & Wyoming the least. In terms of revenue, the fast food industry revenue dropped to 239Billion USD in 2020 from value of 273Billion USD owing to the Covid-19 pandemic [2].

2. The leading Fast Food chains in America [3]:

3. Industry Assessment- The Fast Food chain industry:

McDonald’s Corp. is a part of the fast food industry which is characterised by cheaper food products, high competition and different geo-based growth and strategy patterns. The industry has extremely low entry barriers which translates to a high level of competition in the sector. To understand, consider the example of USA where McDonald’s has a market share of around 26% only, whereas the combined market share of other smaller fast food restaurants is around 55%.

The global fast food chains generate a revenue in excess of $570 Billion annually. The revenue if observed closely surpasses the economic value of most of the countries across the Globe. The United States alone accounted for ~$200 Billion in 2015 which is a massive increase over the $6 Billion revenue in 1970. United States accounts for over 200,000 fast food restaurants and an estimated 50 Million Americans eat at one of them every day. The employment generated by the industry is to the tune of over 4 Million [4].

In the past two years, the industry has been affected due to the Covid-19 pandemic due to the reduction in disposal incomes of customers across the world, disruption in supply chains and souring food and energy prices. Also, the rising awareness amongst the consumers about the health risks associated with the intake of sugary and high fat foods has also been a blow to the growth of the industry.

Also, the fast food companies are experiencing stagnated growths in saturated markets of the Europe & the US. Despite all the social and economic trends across the world, the industry is projected to continue to grow, with high activity in emerging markets of Asia and Africa which are witnessing a growing middle class.

4. McDonald’s Corporation- An introduction [5]:

The McDonald Brothers:

Dick & Mac McDonald felt that the growth opportunities were unavailable in New England and so moved to California. They had failed in movie business but found good success in operating drive-in restaurants. They streamlined their operations and introduced a Speedee Service System featuring hamburgers for 15 cents in the year 1948. This was a huge risk but turned out to be very successful and the brothers started franchising the brand. It was not too long that the with the franchise concepts it grew to 9 operating restaurants. At their San Bernadino retsurant, the brothers perfected the Speedee Service System featuring 15 cents hamburgers, shakes & fries under a limited menu concept and it was so successful that they sold 14 franchises of their brand and soon 10 of those were operational restaurants.

Ray Kroc- The man who wrote the first page of McDonald’s History:

Ray Kroc, was a Chicagoan who worked as an Ambulance driver during World War I and later made a living out of doing a variety of jobs including selling paper cups, becoming a real estate agent in Florida and also playing piano in bands.

Ray Kroc later found employment as Milkshake mixer salesman for the foodservice equipment manufacturer Prince Castle. He was impressed by MacDonald brothers who had purchased 8 of these mixers for their San Bernardino restaurant. He visited the McDonald brothers and later became their first Franchise agent in 1954. In 1955, Kroc opened the first McDonald’s east of the Mississippi river. Kroc had a vision to have over 1000 McDonald’s restaurants solely in the United States.

Going Global:

McDonald’s started its international journey with the opening of its first outside United States restaurants in 1967 in Canada & Puerto Rico. Today the company has footprints in over 119 nations with 39,198 restaurants as in 2020 [6].

The Architecture- The iconic Design journey:

The McDonald brothers envisioned that to draw more attention, the design of the building should highlight their Speedee Service System. The first design (Red & White) came from the Architect Stanley Meson but was later modified by Dick McDonald who added arches to the building. This design was first used in 1953 but was later replaced by the Mansard roof design in 1960s.

The company introduced a new mansard Roof Design 19 the year 1969 in Illinois. Various franchisees adopted the new design and also during the 1970s, Drive-Thru were added by the restaurant.

McDonald’s Today:

McDonald’s continued to evolve in architecture with changing market needs and customers’ expectations. Today, restaurants feature designs that incorporate existing architecture and other unique features.

5. Value Propositions [7]:

Quicker Service, Good Quality Food, Less Priced menu, Great Experience, and Hygiene. As per Porter’s definition of Strategy, McDonald’s offered both value and low price to customers.

Delivery-Efficient & fast:

McDonald’s brothers realised the importance of cutting down on food delivery times and bringing in an idea that was unknown in those times. To achieve a faster delivery, the menu was cut down to a limited number of items, so as to free the resources to focus on quicker deliveries.

Lean Methodology:

With the focus on shorter delivery times, McDonald’s adopted the lean manufacturing process from the automobile industry. Prior to this, the restaurant would prepare the food and keep them in ovens to keep them warm. This reduced the serving times but resulted in a lot of food wastage on the days demand was less. With the adoption of lean methodology, McDonald’s started keeping the raw materials like patties, salad and other ingredients ready and assemble them to finished sandwiches only at the time of order placement. This enabled the restaurant with cutting down on inventory, eliminate wastages and to quickly respond to any change in demand.

McDonald’s also invested on mechanization and developed assembly line machines to make fries, hamburgers and other beverages. This further reduced the cycle time and brought in more consumer base who wanted a quicker delivery that was tasty & consistent every time.

Price:

With the introduction of the machines and a lean manufacturing setup, McDonald’s brought down the labor costs and also helped to increase the sales volumes with faster deliveries. This not only helped reduce costs and inventories but also helped McDonald’s to sell the products at a much cheaper price than the competitors. The price is a sensitive proposition in the fast food chain industry and the restaurant gained massive advantage with the adoption of technology.

Product Quality:

Though price is an important component in the fast food industry but delivering a consistent quality product every time is equally important. As most of the manufacturing tasks were handled my machines, the quality was consistent and also left McDonald brothers with free time to focus on increasing the quality of products at every step. They soon realised that the competitors were playing on with other ingredients to enhance taste and to save on costs with cheaper alternatives.

But, McDonald brothers were adamant on the quality of their products ensuring that they would sell only 100% beef patties that would contain an exact 19% of fat content which was easily doable by the use of machines and established processes. The French fries served by the restaurant were far better than those served by any competitors in the town.

Quality Experience:

The restaurant industry is also characterised by creating quality ambience and providing evolving customer experiences. McDonald brothers realized that the providing a quality product was not enough and to become a sustainable brand in the market, they needed to shift focus on infrastructure that provides awesome experiences to the customers. The focus was to create experiences on the key senses of human beings: touch, smell, taste, sight & hearing.

The restaurant focussed on building architecture with huge arches and introduced a glass partition between kitchen & delivery areas amongst other changes. The premises were kept neat & clean and also were characterized by the rich Aroma as it was considered vital in creating an in-store experience. The employees were provided trainings to interacting a friendly manner with the customers.

Cleanliness & Hygiene:

Delivering a hygienically prepared product and maintaining a clean environment is a key in the restaurant industry to allay hidden customers’ anxieties. McDonald brothers observed that this was one of the most common worries of the customers and felt it important to ensure that none of the customer touch points should trigger these fears.

McDonald’s took efforts to ensure that they maintain high levels of cleanliness and hygiene not only inside but also around their premises. They also ensured that their employees reflect hygiene & cleanliness. The staff was trained and motivated to maintain high standards of hygiene. Also, they allowed customers to view their kitchen to verify if the restaurant was maintaining hygienic standards in food preparations.

Service as manufacturing- The arrival of Ray Kroc:

When Ray Kroc took control of McDonald’s in the year 1955, he took cues from his previous experience of working in the paper cup and multi mixer machines manufacturing industry. He had good knowledge on the equipment designs and the manufacturing process flows and began to view everything around MacDonald’s from a lens of an assembly line and how to further improve it.

Ray Kroc’s focus was to ensure on customer retention and to achieve this, he believed that there was need to have a consistent customer experience across all of McDonald’s food outlets. He wanted to rely on the machinery wherever possible and take the manual resources out of process to ensure consistency in product manufacturing. He also emphasized and implemented a similar experience across all the outlets in terms of delivery speed, cleanliness, environment and methods of food preparation.

McDonald’s strategy to not to rely on manual resources for food preparation was well thought, as providing a consistent experience in restaurant industry is a key for customer retention and providing them an awesome experience always. A manual resource may perform differently at different times and also, the attitude, skills, behaviour and taste would differ from one person to the other

Product Standardisation:

Ray’s strategy to eliminate manual interventions in the food manufacturing processes was a well thought strategy. To achieve this, the team at McDonald’s speared by Ray Kroc developed unique methods and equipment to achieve product standardization.

A very successful example of this was the manufacturing of hamburger patties where the products were prepared in a centralized place with a reliance on machines to ensure consistent texture, color, thickness and density. The patties were then packed carefully and sent as a semi processed product to the outlets. This not only helped to have a consistent product across all service outlets but also brought down the inventory costs and delivery times.

McDonald’s expanded the focus on consistency to all of its major food ingredients like the French fries, burger buns etc.

The attention was to the detail that McDonald’s also designed and developed a testing equipment to test the quality of their patties to ensure consistency.

The McDonald’s strategy of standardisation of product ingredients and processes was something which was never thought of in the food industry. The company took cues from the automobile industry and brought in lean manufacturing methods to ensure consistent quality products to bring down manufacturing costs, minimise wastages and scale up production and sales.

Layout Design- Emulating the Auto manufacturing industry:

Ray Kroc was a pioneer in the restaurant industry in terms of thinking ahead of those times when compared to his peers in the similar industry. He quickly realised the need for investing on layouts that would ensure the smooth flows of materials and information. This would not only suffice the needs of the employees but of the customers as well. The team worked on the layout to deliver the benefits as below:

1. Ease of customer interaction for quicker orders and deliveries.
2. Ease of reach of ingredients for store employees to ensure faster assembly & delivery.
3. Machine layout to ensure a seamless production.
4. Layout design to meet fluctuating demands and ensuring flexibility.
5. Machines and products layouts designed in a way to use them as of promotional value as customers peep inside the stores and kitchens.
6. Space optimisation was a major revamp ensuring optimum ventilation at the same time.
7. Line manufacturing methodology borrowed from automobile industry to optimise the number of steps needed to arrive at the final product 7 delivery.
8. Equipment and design to ensure optimal temperatures in outlets throughout the year.

Equipment Design- Mechanization and focus on efficiency:

The team at McDonald’s under the leadership of Ray Kroc, were constantly looking for ways to standardize the processes, mechanization and keeping up with the skills needed to perform the tasks. Kroc had a prior experience working in the multi-mixer industry and firmly believed that mechanization of the processes would help the company establish a massive cost advantage when compared to his competitors. The basis of designing the equipment was focused around energy efficient machines that are easy to use and clean. Kroc hired Jim Schindler who was his prior associate and was an expert on designing food processing machines. The hard work of Kroc & Jim paid off well and they designed the machines that helped McDonald’s to:

1. Ensure efficient and consistent milkshakes by eliminating the hand dipping ice-cream method where the ice cream quantity depended on the operator, to a more efficient and consistent method of a pre-measured ice cream quantity that dropped from an overhead tank.
2. To reduce the oil consumption (by 40%) and frying time with the development of high- efficiency fryers and were also designed in way to simplify filtering and cleaning. McDonald’s also went on with the implementation of a conveyor system which was not thought of in the restaurant industry in those times.

Learning from automobile industry and focusing on technology and standardisation of processes was something which was unseen in those times in the restaurant industry. Ray Kroc’s vision and focus on these aspects is something that put McDonald’s on top of the game in the Quick Service restaurant industry.

6. Branding/ Marketing/ Advertising Strategy:
Packaging:

Kroc’s strategy to build brand recognition and recall was visible in the takeaway packaging. He chose good quality paper material which represented the quality and safety of the brand. He also modified the graphics on the packaging highlighting the famous arch design of McDonald’s outlets. He knew that symbols are a better way of communication and brand recognition rather than words.

The Advertising Fund:

When McDonald’s started expanding to suburbs, some of the outlets at these locations were struggling to generate the footfall. Kroc realised the need for advertising and when other competitors considered advertising as an expenditure, he perceived this as an investment. McDonald’s started advertising in National media and realised the benefits immediately with increased customers across its outlets. In 1957, McDonald’s even hired an expensive public relations firm for around 500 USD/ month. This was the time when Kroc was facing with a cash crunch finding difficult to manage his as well his employee’s salaries but this bold step helped the organisation expand customer base rapidly.

He also, setup a “Operators National Advt. Fund” where every McDonald’s outlet had to contribute a small portion of their revenue to this fund for advertising campaigns. This helped reduce the cost burdens of advertising on individual stores and it became inexpensive to run such campaigns. Kroc also established local associations to help operators to advertise in the local market within their state. The operators contributed 1% to meet the advertising expenses and followed the guidelines setup by McDonald’s corporation.

From the above it is clear that McDonald’s has been fast adapting to evolving market dynamics, growing technology and changing customer preferences. The company’s foundational pillars are based around creating personalised experiences for the Customers and providing them a consistent product across their delivery centres.Also, the digital adaptation and enhancements on delivery fronts fits well and mitigates the risk of current pandemic challenges faced by the restaurants world over.

7. Supply Chain management- Food Quality & Sourcing:

The long term vision of Ray Kroc ensuring a seamless supply chain, and a collaboration where everyone including the operators, employees, vendors and McDonald’s corporation would make profit were unthought of, in those times.

Vendors or partners?

Ray knew the importance of the vendors to run a successful business and wanted to build long term relationship with McDonald’s vendors. He was selective in his choice of vendors and onboarded on the ones who were passionate and had a vision same as his. For this reason, many of the vendors McDonald’s has today have been associated with the organisation from the beginning.

McDonald’s treats its vendors as partners and to ensure a healthy relationship:

1. Executives invest time on vendors to explore ways to deliver the McDonald’s core values of delivering Quality products at a cheaper price and with quick delivery.
2. They also imparted knowledge to the vendors to assist in ensuring smooth production.
3. The supply chain strategies were made in collaboration with vendors where they were rewarded for bringing in innovative solutions.

Martin-Brower Company LLC started as a vendor to McDonald’s supplying paper napkins in 1956 and kept up the innovation pace. The result- It’s a multi billion dollar company today and supplies to over 15000 outlets of McDonald’s in North America

Communication:

McDonald’s transparent culture motivated vendors in a big way. The company ensured that the data for sales, inventory and demand projections is shared across its chain of partners and franchise owners. The company also invested in the logistics network to track ingredients movements.

Sourcing:

McDonald’s works with farmers to ensure imparting education, financial support and technical knowledge and is the biggest purchaser of the beef in the world. The company focusses on building long term relationships with the farmers by signing fixed price contracts that ensure mutual benefit against uncertain events and price fluctuations.

Food Quality & Sourcing [8]:

McDonald’s commitment to customers, communities and the environment by its focus to create a future of secure, quality and sustainable food is promising. The specialised menus and the ingredients suitable for children served as part of Happy Meal in many countries, shows the focus on families and children as well. Also, involvement and investment in the raw material supply chain is a good strategy to ensure food quality consistency and allays the fears of changing supplier dynamics and disruptions of the raw material supply chain.

“We want people to leave our restaurants feeling good about eating our food — not just because it’s delicious, but also we source quality ingredients and give customers options. We will continue to invest in strong partnerships with suppliers and farmers around the world and deliver on customer expectations by evolving our menu and offering balanced, wholesome options the whole family can enjoy”- Alistair Macrow, Senior Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer McDonald’s Corporation

Economics of Scale:

McDonald’s operates in a space known for high volume low margin business. The company works very closely with the vendors to reduce the costs at every level. Vendors also are enthusiastic to work with the organization as a collaboration with McDonald’s is perceived as an opportunity of a lifetime. Due to the high volume of raw material requirements, McDonald’s had the leverage to experiment with the vendors on whether it was the process or the product packaging.

Louis Kuchuris’ May Ann bakery was chosen as the supplier of buns to McDonald’s in 1955. In 15 years, Kuchuris scaled up the business and had an automatic baker with a quarter-mile-long coiling buns belt conveyor. The bakery consumed one million flour a month and started a truck comoany just to serve McDonalds’ stores.

Perishable Food Industry — Cold Chain System:

McDonald’s became the first in its class to implement a cold chain processing, storage & distribution organization. This helped maintain the freshness and shelf life of the pre-processed raw materials.

McDonald’s operated in a high volume business and in our view implementing a cold storage system across the supply chain in those days was a very smart move as it helped the restaurant chain to buy in bulk and manufacture in high volumes. This provided McDonald’s with the cost advantage, that is very crucial in this low margin industry.

8. Product development & innovation:

McDonald’s Research & Development laboratory established by Ray Kroc with the help of Louis Martino in 1961 was a clear indication that the restaurant chain wanted to establish a sustainable leadership in the industry. The lab focussed on bringing in new innovative products to scale up automation and drive process standardisation and speed.

McDonald’s also invested on research in consumer preferences, behaviours, evolving tastes and regional/ cultural behaviours. A classic example of this can be seen in their present-day Indian menu serving McAloo Tikki burgers and spicy paneer wraps to suit the Indian taste preferences.

McDonald’s investment on mechanization, automation, computers and product research was a vision which no one in the industry had thought of in those days. A lot of the restaurant chain’s present day success to drive continuous innovation and low cost of production is attributed to the early investments on technology and paving a way for a better tomorrow

9. Human Resources- Hiring the right people:

Ray Kroc believed in the importance of hiring the right people and also was committed to provide is employees a bright future. For his associates, he hired only the folks who shared his own vision, passion and commitment towards building the McDonald’s of future. Irrespective of the past experience, Ray hired people for their potential and commitment to deliver.

Something which was very unusual and novel for those times, Ray even started a Hamburger University in 1961, which was the ‘Global Training Centre’ for McDonald’s with an aim to provide training to the employees. The training was focussed not only at upskilling the employees in operations but other social skills like leadership, ethics & responsibility as well. It also acted as a motivation booster for the employees who wanted to transverse vertically through the career ladder.

In our view, the idea of establishing corporate training hub in the restaurant industry clearly demonstrates that McDonald’s under the leadership of Ray Kroc was committed to the core to provide a world class restaurant experience to the customers and also to provide growth opportunities to its employees. It is often said, an organization is only as good as its employees are, but to realise that so early in the business is remarkable

10. Real Estate Strategy:

McDonald’s was focussed on providing a consistent experience to the customers across all its outlets and so controlled everything from the location of the stores and the architecture. The company leased out premises and rented them to the franchises for a period of 20 years.

At one point of time, Harry Sonneborn, the CFO of McDonald’s had made a statement that the company is not in the food business rather they are in the real estate business. He had added further that the franchise by selling their hamburgers can generate revenues to make profit and as tenants pay the rents to the company as well.

The team at McDonald’s spent lot of time in researching for the right locations by analysing traffic flows, people movements, behaviours, nearby establishments like supermarkets, stores, schools & churches etc.

Ray Kroc & Harry shared the same amount of passion and attention to detail when it came to zeroing in on the locations for their outlets. Their experience and vision was evident from the fact that they looked for the areas where there were signs of growth in near future.

McDonald’s Business model & market strategy [9]:

11.Porter’s Five Forces Analysis [10] [11]:

How can McDonald’s Corporation tackle these threats:

Tackling ‘Threat of bargaining power of Buyers’:
In any market, for any product, buyers are often a demanding lot. The buyers try to pay the minimum premium possible to buy the best offerings available. The smaller & more powerful the buyer base is, the more powerful it becomes with a higher bargaining power to seek lower prices & discounts. To tackle this threat, McDonald’s needs to:

1. Continue building a larger customer base which in turn reduces the bargaining power.
2. Continue the innovation journey as discounts are often sought on established products. Also, introduction of new products, helps retain existing customers and also help to add new customers.

Tackling ‘Threat of bargaining power of Suppliers’:
All the established players in the restaurant industry buy the raw material from multiple suppliers and suppliers who are in dominant position have higher negotiating powers to govern higher prices. Higher the bargaining power, lower the margins and profits for the restaurants. To tackle this threat, McDonald’s needs to:

1. Build efficient supply chains with multiple suppliers.
2. Experiment with different raw materials to enable switching to a lower priced material in case of any supply disruptions or higher prices.
3. Develop dedicated and reliable suppliers whose business highly depends on McDonald’s.

Tackling ‘Threat of new Entrants’:
The new entrants in any business, sometimes come with innovative techniques and put pressure on existing players. The pressure may be in the form of an innovative product, a lower pricing strategy or may be a new value proposition to the customers. To tackle this threat, McDonald’s needs to:

1. Continuously innovate with new products & services with changing customer needs.
2. Bring new customers and also retain existing ones by giving them a reason to stay.
3. Continue to build economies of scale that lower fixed cost per unit.

Tackling ‘Rivalry amongst existing Competitors’:
Sometimes there is an intense rivalry amongst the existing competitors in some markets/industries. Such rivalries bring down prices and the overall profitability of either of the firms. McDonald’s operates in a highly competitive restaurant industry and to tackle this threat, it needs to:

1. Build a sustainable differentiation in its products & services when compared to others’.
2. Continue to build economies of scale that lower fixed cost per unit and help compete better.
3. Build collaborations in growing markets to increase the market share & footprint.

Tackling ‘Threat of substitute products or services’:
Whenever a substitute product or service is made available in the market, the industry profitability suffers. The threat is even higher if the value proposition, the substitute may bring is unique & different from the present offerings in the same industry. To tackle this threat, McDonald’s needs to:

1. Continue the efforts on innovating on industry service needs.
2. Understand the core needs of the customer and enhance customer buying experience.
3. Find means to increase the switching cost for the customers.

12. Present day- The 3 Growth Pillars [12]:

13. Conclusion & Recommendations:

McDonald’s has set a very high bar in the quick service restaurant industry and has very strategically placed itself at every level of the business. Whether it’s the business strategy defining the organization with cost leadership differentiation with competitors, the international strategy of responding to the local societal sensitive cultural needs (Eg. No beef in India & serving wine in France) or the strategy of co-partnering with some companies like the fuel stations for setting up their outlets, McDonald’s market leadership is something many organizations have tried to emulate.

But, for any organization to succeed, a unique set of activity or product differentiation is not enough. It is not difficult for the competitors to quickly adapt and imitate the processes and value propositions. The thing that sets apart great organizations from others are the activities the organization chooses not to do. These are the trade-offs which are not compatible or inline with the organization’s vision & core values. These trade-offs are difficult to copy and McDonald’s has always been committed to not compromising on any of its core values and priorities.

Though the restaurant industry is characterized by ever evolving consumer preferences, whether it is the food products or the experiences, but, the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has put more focus on the food delivery channels.

The US fast food industry has moved increasingly online and the online food delivery market’s global revenue clocked over a 107.4 billion USD in 2019. Given the increasing home delivery preferences, it was predicted that the market size of the US fast food sector providing home deliveries shall reach around 33.2 billion USD13.

The current pandemic induced economic downturn promises an increase in demand for fast food due to lower prices and busy schedules. Many of the big restaurant chains have collaborated with online food delivery partners like UberEats, DoorDash & GrubHub. In 2021, the market share of the online food delivery was expected to rise from a pre Covid estimate of 10% to a corrected post Covid value of 14%. In 2021. In our view, the organization should take a halt on investments on the in-premise dining for the time being as the footfall has reduced drastically. Our suggestion would be focus on minimum touch experiences (Drive thru & Deliveries) to serve the changing customer needs.

McDonald’s growth pillars focussing on the need for digitalization and providing customers with shows the flexibility & rapid adoption of technology. In our view digitalization, digital transformation and data would play a big role in emerging markets to drive better customer retention & growth. The company should continue to invest in keeping up with the technology in days to come, that will go a long way to further build customer trust & loyalty.

Also, the Covid-19 pandemic has stressed on the need for Healthier food options, and McDonald’s quick adoption and experimentation to include healthier options in the menu may be a game changer and draw more footfall in days to come.

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References:

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/one-attraction-still-drawing-shoppers-to-malls-food.html

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/196614/revenue-of-the-us-fast-food-restaurant-industry-since-2002/

[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/biggest-fast-food-chains-in-america

[4] https://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/fast-food-industry-analysis-2020-cost-trends/

[5] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-company/who-we-are/our-history.html

[6] https://www.statista.com/statistics/219454/mcdonalds-restaurants-worldwide/

[7] https://shahmm.medium.com/how-did-mcdonalds-build-its-sustainable-competitive-advantage-4a509f2457e1

[8] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-purpose-and-impact/food-quality-and-sourcing.html

[9] https://startuptalky.com/mcdonalds-case-study/

[10] http://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/porter5/analysis/2968-mcdonald-s-corporation.php

[11] https://www.mbaknol.com/business-analysis/porters-five-forces-analysis-of-mcdonalds/

[12] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-company/who-we-are/our-growth-pillars.html (Reproduced As-is)

[13] https://www.statista.com/topics/863/fast-food/