These Days - Everything Bad Starts in California

 More on the duel between the fast food industry and labor unions

California op/ed by Dan Walters

Burger King Profitability - Maze

Corporate CEOs always lie about franchisee profitability

$2,000,000 profit on $1.6 million in sales? That's 12% profit on extremely low volume?

Another reason BK only has a few company stores.

Many CEOs Still Have Their Pay Tied to DEI

McDonald’s annual incentive plan continues to hold the CEO and senior executive officers accountable for efforts that drive employee engagement and values, including inclusion. - Fortune

RFK Jr. Sworn in as Trump's health secretary - ABC News

Let us not forget that Kennedy spent most of 2024 running for president as a Democrat. To a Democrat, the answer to everything is more government. He will call for more regulation with every challenge he confronts.

This will conflict with the Trump administration's focus on smaller government. Kennedy's tenure at HHS will be about 18 months.

Kennedy could boost beef tallow demand - Reuters

Some Comments From MCD Analyst Call - Maze

"The overall market is pretty muted" - MCD CEO

What Are the Plans for Your Brand?

MCD analyst conference call transcript - 2024 results - Motley Fool

CNBC on McDonald's Results - Video

Analyst David Palmer has been covering MCD for years and is usually a big fan - interesting discussion

MCD Managment Claims an Increase in USA Traffic

Is that possible along with a decrease in same-store sales?

U.S. McDonald's Customers Spend Less Per Visit in Q4

 USA SSS a full one percent below what Wall Street was expecting

SSS down -1.4%. Analysts expected to be down - .41%

There's Nothing Convenient About Cannibalization

On Monday, February 10th, McDonald's Corp. will announce its historical results for 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2024. McDonald's management has made public commitments for several years regarding the number of new restaurants it plans to open through 2027. One year ago, management promised to open 2,100 new restaurants worldwide in 2024. Did they reach their goal?

Shareholders demand never-ending sales growth from McDonald's. If those sales don't come from same-store sales, they must come from new store openings. Shareholders must be convinced that McDonald's can open an infinite number of new stores.

Unfortunately, the worst series of mistakes in the history of the McDonald's system resulted from building too many new stores too quickly. And that wasn't recently; it was a quarter century ago. We've often discussed the "Convenience Strategy" and published a summary of those events two years ago, HERE > New MCD stores 1995 to 1999

Some of the most serious mistakes made during the "Convenience Strategy" were store hungry Owner/Operators grabbing up new stores with no fear that the store should not be built. The second mistake Operators made was believing corporate assurances about cannibalization.

Some things have changed. Given changes in store economics, McDonald's Corp derives a more significant benefit from moving sales dollars from older stores to newer stores with higher rents and royalties. Another change is, there is no one working for McDonald's Corp. that knows the "Convenience Strategy" even existed or that "Cannibalization" is a real thing.

The fourth quarter of 2024 will tell us a lot about 2025.

QSR Magazine Covers the McBases

This QSR Magazine article covers McDonald's research assembled by BTIG analyst Peter Saleh. Peter covers McValue, same-store sales, new-store sales, PACE, new products, etc.

Excellent read. The author is at: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyklein14/

The verdict is still out on McDonald's latest value rush - QSR mag

From DJT

 

Chick-fil-A Successes With Drive-Thru - WSJ

For WSJ subscribers, they've published a comprehensive article on the evolution of Chick's drive-thru.

Inside Chick-fil-A drive-thru by Wall Street Journal

A recap of the WSJ article is published (free) at:

https://retailwire.com/chick-fil-a-drones/