Interesting. Investors are starting to shy away from McDonald’s, because they haven’t met their earnings for 4 of the last 6 quarters. While I’m not an investor, this type of thing is interesting.
The article attributes the current stall at Mickey D’s to fast growth (duh!) and expanding too quickly (no duh!) In 1998, McDonald’s instituted their “Made for You” campaign and service technique in which foods would be made as fresh as possible. But the Fortune article points out that the system has been a big failure and, what’s this?, the system is based on computers running Pentium IIIs.
No offense, but why does McDonald’s even need P3s? Couldn’t the system run on 486s? I bet they’re Dells, even.
All kidding aside, McDonald’s simply grew very quickly and now are hitting a big, big pleateau. It’s going to be up to them to either make new products and offer new services, or simply start contracting. This type of thing can happen to any big chain which grows too fast without putting much thought into stabilization. Of course, Wal-Mart adapted a similar philosophy; they intend to blanket the nation with stores and then sacrifice the poor-performing ones.
While McDonald’s didn’t appear to have that plan in mind, it could very well happen – leaving more people out of jobs, fewer low-paying jobs, and a rather ugly blemish on the American suburban countryside.
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