The Arches Are Sagging. What Would the Doctors Do?

The New York Times ^ | 10/20/02 | Claudia H. Deutsch

[GeneD]

McDonald's the epitome of most consumer-products firms: a machine for financing bad television and luxury boxes at the Olympics, the tail wagging a very mangy dog. The executives don't have to improve their cash cows so long as they get to schmooze with Hollywood types. Let 'em eat Big Macs. Doesn't anyone believe this company's excessive devotion to TV and showing off hasn't hurt it as much as poor quality and dirty restaurants?

[doberville]

Maybe Mickey D's is an idea whose time has come. . .and gone.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Jack M. Greenberg, the chief executive of McDonald's, and his team have tried just about everything to bolster the company's sales, profits and share price.

Well... they could always try and server better food... nah... that would be too easy...

[lelio]

Look at In-N- Out
My favorite fast food burger chain. Simple menu, tastes great.
I agree with Wolfgang on the "how can you make a good burger for 99 cents" -- who are they competing with price against? BK and Wendy's don't go this low. Taco Bell is around that (99 cents for 2 tacos) but that's a crowd that doesn't want a burger.
I wonder how McDonald's makes their money. Everyone I've been in employs at least a dozens kids at one time. So their labor costs are at least $60/hr. If they are making a quarter off of each meal they'll have to sell at least 250 an hour, every hour to break even. And that's not including property costs, advertising, franchising costs.
It would be interesting to hear from a former franchiser how much money they made. I suspect its only corporate making money on McDonald's.

[Alberta's Child]

I rarely eat fast food, but I'd say McDonald's has fallen apart for one reason: The drive for lower prices. The problem with selling a 99-cent burger is that you end up attracting the least discerning customers in the market. This is a major problem for a corporate giants like McDonald's because they end up competing for bottom-feeders who would be content to eat a burger made of sh!t if it cost ten cents less than a Big Mac.

The big auto makers have developed a marketing strategy that other companies would do well to emulate. They sell a ton of crappy little cars, but they make all their money on luxury cars, SUVs, and trucks.

[JZoback]

Jack M. Greenberg, the chief executive of McDonald's, and his team have tried just about everything to bolster the company's sales, profits and share price.

I have a couple of radicial concept:

1.Make you hamburgers taste like real good and people will buy them.

2.Have the people who serve your food learn to speak English and smile at you like they are glad you came.

I know, it's really way out there, but it's an idea.

[JZoback]

Make you hamburgers taste like real good and people will buy them.

Should be:

Make you hamburgers taste like real food and people will buy them.

[MadIvan]

This is just my taste, but whenever I pass someone eating a Big Mac, I find myself put off food rather than hungry. Something just doesn't smell right. Their fries are all right, but I'll take standard British chips over that any day.

Regards, Ivan

[The Red Zone]

I think they would do well to dump the cheesy clown and spiff up their facilities a little. Their food selection and quality is the best it's ever been (I wish they'd introduced the Big-N-Tasty mayo burger, and soup, years ago).

[Betty Jane]

Perhaps they could make hamburger patties that aren't half the size of the bun.

[Steely Tom]

Veronica and Betty sagging? Never!

Huh...? Wha...?

Oh. Never mind.

(steely)

[The Red Zone]

Each soft drink is almost pure profit, and I would expect the milk shakes and soft-serve ice cream products are at least 75% so. The 99 cent items are loss leaders.

[lelio]

Well, did you know that McDonald's has a culinarily trained executive chef?
And he's employed to cook for the execs. What on earth do you need s "culinarily trained chef" for with a burger joint?
What McDonald's should do is raise their prices (where are those people looking for 99 cent burgers going to go?) and offer punch tickets for regular customers. That worked for me at coffee shops (woo woo, a whole 10% off!) and it would work for fast food.

[The Red Zone]

What on earth do you need s "culinarily trained chef" for with a burger joint?

More like a food engineer to come up with reasonably even (if often mediocre) quality items. Their standard hamburger and fries are the same wherever you go. I have seen a difference in quality in some of the other items, like the BNT burger, between franchises.

[Jonathon Spectre]

The worst thing for McDonalds' is that all seven of the people quoted are all right in literally everything they say.

McDonalds' food sucks. It's awful, and it's way, way too fatty and high-calorie even for me. I'm not averse to putting away a bunch of fat and calories, but if I'm going to do the crime, I want it to be worthwhile, translation, damned good. Hungry Howie's cheesesticks are worthwhile. I'll spend an extra half-hour on the bike for those. But for McD's miserable kiddy food? No thanks.

McD's management also seems to be hell-bent on "diversifying" themselves out of business. McCookies? McPizza? What the McHell? Do one thing. Do it exceedingly well. McD's seems to have forgotten this, and instead of going back to their roots (and might I remind everyone they were once VERY successful purveyors of quite good hamburgers) they are adrift in a wilderness, searching for a "magic bullet" item that will bring people flocking back into their franchises. Serving frozen yogurt or barbecue ribs or whatever ridiculous non-McDonalds' thing the focus group has decided on this week will not save them.

And this is a bit off-topic, but I was totally appalled at seeing McDonalds' advertise "chicken select strips", featuring "100% chicken"!

WHAT THE HELL HAS BEEN IN THE MCNUGGETS ALL THIS TIME?!?

[governsleastgovernsbest]

McDonald's is the hamburger place. Yet there is simply no doubt that their hamburgers are not as good as Burger King's. I would never eat at McD so long as there's a BK anywhere nearby.

If McD wants to be more successful, they have to make their burgers as good as BK's. That probably means an expensive retooling to produce flame-broiled burgers, but I don't think McD has a choice.

[barker]

Have the people who serve your food learn to speak English and smile at you like they are glad you came.

I'll go along with that. Last time I stopped at a McDonalds the girl had to call two different people before one of them understood I was trying to tell them I saw a rat running into one of their drain tubes.

[RipSawyer]

Maybe Mickey D's is an idea whose time has come. . .and gone.


Their success has always been based on marketing to the kids and hoping the kids will whine enough to bring the parents in with them. While I have eaten at a McDonald's a few times, either when going along to get along or just very hungry and nothing else available, I have never known an adult who thought the burgers were really good other than a few of the sort whose tastes never seemed to mature. Marketing to children is not going to produce growth for them in the future. Reminds me of the time long ago when I was working on some machinery in a factory in a very small town and I left for lunch and with very little to choose from I bought a burger at Hardee's. When I returned a lady asked me, as ladies often do for some unknown reason, what I had had for lunch. I told her I had gone to Hardee's, whereupon whe asked me, "why is it that the burgers there are so much better than what you make at home?" "The only reason I can think of is that you don't know how to make a hambuger", was my reply.

[JZoback]

What McDonald's should do is raise their prices (where are those people looking for 99 cent burgers going to go?)

Actually, that's really bad idea. That's all their business.

You can be price driven to retain the bottom feeders, but they need to put a medium priced burger on the menu that tastes like a whooper or a Wendy's burger.

People don't mind paying for taste.

[Bonaparte]

Not one of these "experts" mentioned the most important thing -- customer feedback. McDonald's should structure this in by training the people at the cash register to actively solicit this information with just two questions to each customer while he waits: "What do you like most about McDonald's?" and "What's the best thing McDonald's can do to improve even more?" The responses can be code-keyed into a central computer right there at the checkstand.

And Puck doesn't know what he's talking about. The fries at McDonald's are, in IMCO, mediocre at best. Of course, if even a mediocre product sells briskly (and it often does) then they should continue with it in spite of its inferiority.