Which proves to me that they were dumb then, and were still dumb in 2015 when they launched all-day breakfast around the country. The problem is, that when you provide something to a large number of people, they get used to having access to it. Then, after a period of years, it is taken away at a time convenient for the company to do it, ie., lockdown. Had they taken notice of the failure in the market all those years ago, they could have saved themselves a lot of money. As I mentioned in one of my comments to someone else, no matter what time of day I go to McDonald's here, I have to pull up and wait for a burger and fries to get done. I don't order anything special, just what's on the menu. If I have to sit in my car and wait for a burger and fries to be cooked, why can't I wait for them to cook me a breakfast sandwich? I don't mind waiting. That's the choice I make when I go there.
They were smart in doing the experiments. The benefit of having 10s of thousands of stores is that you can try things out. But you have to pay attention to the results. By 2015 they were desperate, that makes everybody dumb. Sales were dropping, customer satisfaction was dropping, quality and service times were taking a hit. More importantly the game was changing. Quick service places like Sauce, Pei Wei, and 5 Guys were hitting the market being not as quick but way better. And were killing McDs in the market.
So they ignored their info. Made a desperate move. And it failed. Breakfast were just enough to be a problem. Quality and service times continued to suffer. And worse so did revenue because the breakfast items are cheaper. In less than a year they were letting franchises limit the breakfast all day menu. The initiative had already failed, but nobody was willing to admit it.
It’s all related though. Do to the additional complication service times dropped. So now they couldn’t pull off McD standards. And you had to wait for everything. That was part of the failure.
Because you’re not supposed to have to wait for McD. 30 seconds. That’s the target. And they’re failing. And they’re going to keep failing because they keep making variations of the same wrong move. They need to shred most of the menu. Get back to what they were good at, a limited number of items very quickly. Every time they add more crap to the menu they just keep digging the same hole.