McDonald's Sets New Targets in Growth Strategy

CHICAGO — In order to advance its "Accelerating the Arches" strategy, McDonald's Corp. launched new growth targets which are intended to maximize the company's marketing, continue their commitment to core menu items, and expand on the company's delivery, digital and drive-thru efforts.

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Since 2019, the quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain stated it has generated 30% comparable sales growth through "Accelerating the Arches." 

For its marketing focus, McDonald's plans to continue to build relevance amongst customers through emotional connections and creative campaigns, such as the "Raise Your Arches" campaign, which was originally developed for the United Kingdom, but was quickly picked up by more than 35 markets around the world.

Building on its historic strength with burgers and other core menu items like chicken nuggets and fries, the company plans to deploy the "Best Burger" initiative to nearly all markets by 2026 and to expand chicken-based items like the McCrispy as a universal offering by the end of 2025. 

Additionally, McDonald's plans to increase the active user base for its loyalty program to 250 million, 90-day active users and deliver $45 billion in annual systemwide sales to loyalty members by 2027. The quick-service restaurant chain also plans to expand its U.S. pilot of "Ready On Arrival" across its top six markets by 2025. This initiative enables crew members to begin assembling a customer's mobile order prior to their arrival at the restaurant to expedite service.

According to the company, McDonald's currently has the industry's largest delivery program globally but will continue to scale this capability, expecting 30% of delivery orders to originate in its mobile app by 2027.

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Alongside improving the layout and expanding the capacity of existing and new drive-thrus, McDonald's also plans to accelerate the pace of its restaurant openings, targeting a goal of 50,000 restaurants by the end of 2027. 

Finally, the company intends to continue to invest in new technology strategies. It has entered into a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to connect the latest cloud technology and apply generative artificial intelligence solutions across its restaurants worldwide in order to improve upon its automation solutions. In 2024, McDonald's will also begin to deploy universal software that all customer and restaurant digital platforms will run on, providing more consistency and stability for both staff and customers.