The war on obesity is starting to wrack up casualties from causes other than diabetes and heat disease. McDonalds has seen its profits take a 30 percent hit in Q3 2014. The problems on U.S. soil with changing opinions on fast food were compounded by a higher-than-expected tax rate, the supply chain crisis in China and store closures in Russia and the Ukraine, reports Self Service World.
CEO Don Thompson however, remains focused on the future, not the problems of the past, and has announced millennial-based outreach efforts such as self-ordering kiosks and a mobile app and payment system to bring people back to the golden arches.
The company is calling this effort the “McDonald’s Experience of the Future.”
Thompson also noted that the lack of interest among millennial customers is less a “Mickey D’s problem” and more a “QSR as a whole,” problem, and one that he thinks can be remedied with the a greater focus on changing the experience for the younger, more digitally based consumer.
“The reality is we haven’t been changing at the same rate as our customers. So we’re changing and we’re changing aggressively,” he said during the Q3 earnings call. “The key to our success will be our ability to deliver a more relevant experience. We have listened to our customers and we better understand what their future experience should look like – personalized, local, a contemporary and inviting atmosphere and choices on how they order, what they order and how they’re served.”
The mobile, or “Global app” as it’s called by the company – will evolve throughout the next year offering an enhanced rewards program and more variations on payment.
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“We’ve already moved beyond the Innovation Center and learning labs to implementation in markets such as Australia and France. They will be slightly different in each market but I’m excited to differentiate the brand and grow the business,” he said.
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