Burgers! Fries! Doesn’t do it for you? Given my unique position, I think I can relate. What position might that be, you ask? Why, that of a millennial churning out a well-earned buck at McDonald’s.
As a former employee of McDonald’s and also a member of the generation that the media perpetually points to to explain the fast food giant’s downturn, I think I am eminently qualified to speak (at least a little bit) about the status of the Golden Arches.
Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a pretty laid-back guy. It takes a lot to rile me. So give me a cheeseburger and box of French fries any day, and I’ll be content. Is it the best for me? No, but everything in moderation, right?
Many of my peers don’t necessarily see it that way though. For them, an eatery shouldn’t just be about quickness and efficiency, but an experience, flavor, variety, especially healthy variety. To them, the mechanization and interchangeability that led to McDonald’s rise is its greatest flaw.
Of course, that’s a blanket statement. I can tell you, firsthand, there are plenty of young people still coming into McDonald’s. Who else do you think buys all of our iced coffee (though there are older patrons when it comes to cold caffeine than you would think)?
Still, the higher-ups at McDonald’s at least feel that it’s the millennials driving down their sales. In order to combat that they’ve implemented a few different strategies, which I’m sure you’ve heard of at one point or another. First was the all-day breakfast menu, allowing customers to purchase most breakfast items outside of normal breakfast hours.
Now, the company has come up what has been dubbed the “Panera-ization” of McDonald’s: signature sandwiches. Signature sandwiches provide not only a number of sandwiches that look and taste a lot prettier (for a slight upcharge) but also include a degree of variability, as the customer is able to choose what kind of meat, sauce, and bun they would like the sandwich to come on.
Whether this latest effort will actually have any negligible impact on McDonald’s remains to be seen. In the mean time, the fast food giant seems reluctant to sit still.
Though virtually all of McDonald’s losses have been drawn from the domestic market, a new deal bringing 2,000 new restaurants to China, has the company betting that it can at least recoup some of its losses abroad.
Though McDonald’s sold controlling interest in the Chinese market to firms Citic and the Carlyle Group earlier this year, they retain a 20% stake. The company says that it plans to target its focus on primarily smaller cities in the Chinese market.
Again, whether or not these efforts will be fruitful remains to be seen. As for the domestic market, the crux of the “millennial problem” will likely be the focus of Mickey D’s efforts to reverse the sliding trend. The rest of us will just have to hang tight and continue flipping our burgers.
