NEW YORK โ Beef, chicken and coffee are core menu items McDonaldโs Corp. will continue to explore ways to improve in an effort to grow sales, said Ian F. Borden, executive vice president and global chief financial officer of the Chicago-based company.
In a March 13 presentation at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference in New York, Borden described different levels of success and opportunity in each platform.
In beef, McDonaldโs is in the early innings of its โbest burgerโ initiative, which Borden described as a series of โsmall changes in how we cook and prepare our core beef products.โ He said the program is focused on driving โsignificant improvements in taste and qualityโ and has been rolled out to about 70 markets. Plans call for the program to be in place in the rest of McDonaldโs system by the end of 2026, he said.
โTaste and quality are the two biggest drivers of consumer visits to our restaurants, so thatโs impactful,โ he said.
Another opportunity in beef involves size. Borden said McDonaldโs has not been successful in developing a premium burger that resonates with consumers, so the company has shifted focus to developing a โlarge, more satiating-type burger.โ
โThat opportunity is significant,โ he said. โItโs consistent across many of our large markets.โ
Borden said McDonaldโs has several other beef products it is in the process of piloting.
โWeโre going to pilot those products in two or three, what we call โmarket zeroes,โโ he said. โWe’re then going to โ if those products work, weโre then going to scale one solution to that opportunity globally, where in the past, you would have seen us probably try and get after that opportunity in 20 different markets in 20 different ways, and then you donโt have the ability to build a global equity that you can drive at scale.โ
The chicken category, meanwhile, is much larger and growing faster than beef, Borden said, adding that McDonaldโs is under-indexed in its share of the chicken market. He said the company put a plan in place several years ago to grow its chicken business, and while McDonaldโs has grown its presence in the category the opportunity to be an even bigger player remains in sight.
Borden said McDonaldโs is in the process of scaling two of its newer chicken platforms: McCrispy and McSpicy.
While upbeat about the companyโs beef and chicken menu platforms, Borden offered a different take on McDonaldโs coffee platform.
โI would say weโre not happy with our progress in coffee,โ he said. โI mean we are the No. 2 coffee player globally. So, we have a significant share in coffee, but we havenโt made the progress as consistently as we believe we can. And we believe the biggest opportunity is weโre not delivering consistent taste and quality execution. Again, taste and quality are those top two drivers of customer visits.
โMaybe a micro example of why, we have 100 different coffee machines across our business today. So how can you possibly deliver a consistent experience if you arenโt even putting the product together in a consistent way? So, weโre going to just get a lot more focus. Weโre going to bring that consistency to life at scale. And we believe by doing that, we can deliver a significant impact on taste and quality for customers and deliver a better experience.โ
