👉 Background: McDonalds is the home of all comfort foods… salty salty chippies, Big Mac burgers and McFlurries. Not to forget Ronald Mcdonald, who has actually been killed off by Maccas’ marketing team.

👉 What happened: Now, Maccas has reported that global sales fell 1% in the second quarter of this year or more than $100 million USD less than forecast. And it’s the first quarter in over 3 years that it has suffered a drop in revenue.

👉 What else: The biggest hit for Maccas has been low-income consumers who have cut back on visits and gone to cheaper competitors. So now, Maccas needs to find a way to bring value back to its restaurants.

What's the key learning?

💡When you stray too far from your winning playbook, you risk losing your competitive edge.

💡Maccas has always positioned itself as good quality and good value. In fact, during economic downturns, Maccas has traditionally brought in more customers. But McDonalds has significantly increased their prices, with the Big Mac up 21% since 2019 or the price of french fries in Australia up 50% since 2019.

💡Low-income customers are heading to other fast-food chains like Burger King and Domino’s. So now, Maccas is scrambling madly to create new value deals to bring back its customers because Burger King is currently re-writing the playbook that it originally wrote.