Sonic’s numbers fell. Taco Bell same-store sales dropped and Wendy’s is projecting sales figures short of its goals.
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When Steve Easterbrook took over as chief executive past year, he vowed to improve its products with less processing and more humanely treated animals.
When McDonald’s announced plans past year to use only cage-free eggs by 2025, more than 100 companies followed up with cage-free commitments of their own, Andres said.
Last year, McDonald’s pulled out all the stops: breakfast sandwiches made with egg whites, salad and fruit side dishes, chicken wraps packed with cucumbers – the first time the vegetable made its way onto any menu item served at the golden arches.
The moves advance McDonald’s efforts to provide the healthier food options that consumers are increasingly seeking out.
“Some of the changes may be a little on the late side, but it was McDonald’s that kicked off the move to cage-free eggs”, said Nomura Securities analyst Mark Kalinowski. Because the fast food behemoth has made them completely free of artificial preservatives.
As of Monday, the chain rolled artificial preservative-free breakfast items, from pork sausage patties to omelet-style eggs and scrambled eggs.
The artisan rolls introduced in 2015 never contained high fructose syrup.
Certain ingredients are being removed from popular menu items, McDonald’s says.
“Why take a position to defend [the ingredients] if customers are saying they don’t want them?” asked Mike Andres, president of McDonald’s USA. It will also remove corn syrup from burger buns, opting instead for natural sugar. That might be a side benefit, but dropping corn syrup from buns and eliminating antibiotics are efforts to both bow to public pressure and change consumer perception.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2008 published a paper concluding that there is no such link. The change comes as the company tries to win back today’s more health-conscious customers.
The company had previously planned to phase out chickens raised with antibiotics important to human medicine by March 2017.
The changes will affect nearly half of the items on their fast food menu. “Nothing is out of bounds”, she said.
How meaningful the changes are to customers remains to be seen.
“Our culinary focus is more important than ever”, said Ms. Foust, who serves as one of the faces of the company’s food focus, including an appearance in a commercial for McDonald’s in Southern California for chef-crafted sandwiches. And then, when the all-day breakfast launched a month later, the following quarter sale’s also soared.
But interest appears to be waning.
But that growth has leveled off and now continues to slow again.
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The most dramatic recent initiative in the United States was moving McDonald’s restaurants to sell breakfast items all day long.
