McDonald’s Simply Introduced Some Nice Information, and It Has These three Issues to Thank

This is a story about the three things McDonald’s recently did to achieve great sales growth over the past month amid a pandemic and economic recession.

The three things? It’s all about promotions, predictions and processes – our own new version of the 3 Ps if you will (as opposed to people’s processes and products). And if you read and learn what McDonald’s has done, you may find brilliant inspiration for your business.

First the big story. McDonald’s said this week that US sales have rebounded since the pandemic began, up 4.6 percent over the past three months from the comparable period in 2019.

That is after a decline of 8.7 percent in April, May and June.

“Our unique strengths,” said CEO Chris Kempczinski in a press release.

I know this sounds like corporate language, and in fairness we’re not going to know for sure if profits for another month match sales growth for that time.

But I think it’s also easy to break it all down and find a couple of strong takeaways.

First, let’s talk about promotions. In September, the third month of the three month period, McDonald’s teamed up with rapper and producer Travis Scott on a meal offer.

This was reportedly McDonald’s first celebrity promotion since the early 1990s when it teamed up with Michael Jordan. It made big headlines and was reportedly so popular that it stretched McDonald’s supply chain and some restaurants were literally running out of hamburgers.

Second: predictions. Because while I’m pretty sure that not a single person reading this would have put “global pandemic” on their forecast list a year ago, McDonald’s has predicted some other trends and invested in technology to take advantage of them.

For example, money has been invested in an attempt to “reinvent the driveway” and use predictive intelligence to customize digital menus based on time of day, weather conditions, and even customer numbers.

It’s still a work in progress, but even if McDonald’s couldn’t have predicted the immediate reason for an increase in take-out and drive-through business, it has hit the right trend.

Finally there is a process. This could prove to be the most important aspect for other companies.

In short, McDonald’s not only guided people through the journey more efficiently (according to McDonald’s, average waiting times have decreased), but also streamlined some other important processes.

Some of them were out of their hands or even serendepitic. For example, the focus on drive-through and take-out came in part because the chain and its franchisees had no choice but to suspend dine-in service at many locations.

But McDonald’s has also tweaked its menu – to get rid of all-day breakfast, for example – which the chain launched to great fanfare a few years ago, only to suspend it in May.

Even before the pandemic, it was reported that the all-day breakfast wasn’t a big winner for McDonald’s as regular breakfast customers simply came in later and bought less profitable breakfast items – and even forced people who bought groceries to wait.

Anyway, it’s stories like this that lead me to advise smaller business owners to be mindful of the strategic decisions that much larger competitors make.

Perhaps you can’t duplicate a McDonald’s promotion with a celebrity like Travis Scott. But is there anything else you could do to get the headlines? Now could be the time.

Perhaps you already spend a lot of time predicting the future. If not, does the McDonald’s experience convince you you should?

And what I think is the most direct takeaway, did you use the pandemic as an opportunity to reflect on the processes you are using in your company?

You may be thinking about rationalizing both the decisions customers have to make (people love decisions, but they sometimes hate decisions) and the efficiency with which you can serve them.

Maybe you don’t have to do any of this. Or maybe you can look at your track record over the past three months and wonder how much higher your sales are than a year ago.

But if you can’t, maybe you should check out McDonald’s.

The opinions expressed by Inc.com columnists here are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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