McDonald’s in the UK is reporting that sales are down 1% and they have acknowledged that they need to take action. A rethink of menu prices being required.
Personally I believe more needs fixing than menu pricing alone. However, recent promotions have included 3 items for £3 and more new burger deals for the family. This is a good step but lots more needs addressing. Here are my thoughts:
- Most consumers no longer class McDonalds as cheap. It can now cost more than pub or restaurant food. Many now avoid eating out and if they do, why pay for a McDonalds when you can have a better sit down experience elsewhere?
- Some of their pricing is now quite sneaky and needs to be more transparent. They introduced new smaller “mini” McFlurries and thought we wouldn’t notice price rises. The regular became much more expensive, then the mini McFlurry inherited the old regular price. They also added 50p if the McFlurry was classed as “Featured” though may now have stopped this. Current pricing is not fixed and tends to change frequently.
- The £1.99 wrap of the day is no longer heavily promoted. They used to advertise daily which wrap was the £1.99.
- 10p for ketchup or BBQ but 70p for other small packets of dips. Really?
- One burger meal can be £9 or £10. Expensive for families/groups.
- The quality of fries is lacking and often cold, even when immediately served over the counter. Supposedly one of their most important and popular products.
- They used to be reliable and rarely got orders wrong. Now it is common place to open your McDonalds bag and have missing items.
- You can pay a lot extra for delivery via delivery companies. Cold food and missing items is not good image and has happened a lot to us. A risk when they use third parties to deliver.
- When they get orders wrong, it used to be easy reporting missing items. Have you tried lately? If the McDonalds app advises they selected Uber Eats to deliver, good luck reporting and gaining a refund. McD points you to Uber and in that instance, Uber do not support all normal customer support options (as you did not order from them in the first place).
- Automation is good to a degree but the downside is you lose the personal touch.
- I would argue that not all branches have tables cleaned as regularly as required. Their restaurants are definitely not as clean anymore.
- Maybe their drive thru option is more popular now but it takes a lot longer now and you often have to wait.
The company appears keen to change and increase sales. It will be interesting to see what they do to turnaround sales and attract customers back. What are your thoughts?
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