Joining us now exclusively the president of McDonald's USA,
Joe Erlinger. Good morning. Good to see you.
Thank you so much for having me.
So you just announced this promotion.
Restaurants don't cut prices for fun.
Did consumers essentially force your hand by being fed up?
Yeah, I, I've zigzagged the country.
I've been in our restaurants.
I've sat in focus groups and customers are telling us
that they're really stretched.
They're really stretched. They felt the stress of the inflation
over the last few years.
And so this is a great opportunity for McDonald's to
bring them value.
I know we're talking about these as the fast food
wars.
I think of them as the value and affordability wars
because that's what our customers want.
Let's talk about the $5 deal,
which makes people go, oh,
cool, I'll go back to McDonald's for $5.
And then you look at the time frame and it
says a four week promotion.
Why not just extend that through?
Yeah, we already see some franchisees are going to vote
this further through and they've already done so in places
like Denver and Dallas and Phoenix and Las Vegas and
Kansas City. And So what we really want to do
is talk about this nationally for four weeks.
We think it'll be a local promotion for longer than
four weeks.
And like the spot just said,
you always have opportunities to go in your local McDonald's
and find the local deals that they have.
And the app offers great value out every day.
Well, you know, your competitors are trying to eat you
for breakfast,
right? They have, they've announced either a $3 meal,
I think that's at Wendy's,
or we're saying, oh, it's going to be all summer.
So I mean, ultimately that's good for consumers.
Do you expect to have to continue to face these
pressures and continue to to lower prices like this?
Yeah, I never think of,
you know, satisfying customers is facing a pressure.
I think this is a great thing for our business.
It's a great thing for our customers.
And so we'll stick to it.
As long as our customers need value,
we're going to provide it to them.
I mean, the the thing that went viral was that
I think that
$18.00 hamburger in Connecticut and everyone went went crazy over
it.
And you went on to say,
well, wait a SEC, I can't remember what your exact
words were,
but the bet you call a lot of this stuff
simply not true that cases like these are outliers.
But there is something about perception,
isn't there? It's like you're like,
oh, I'm not going to stop there because I remember
that they have high prices.
Yeah, that is the exception,
not the rule. But you're right,
there is this perception broadly about fast food prices having
gone up.
And so, you know, I did
write this open letter to to sort of,
you know,
you know, take some of the the,
the myths out of out of the the marketplace.
But we are obviously really committed to value.
And I think that the $5 price point and continuing
to lean into value and affordability and making this really
the summer of value at McDonald's
obviously will change that perception.
It's interesting because your fact sheet,
which is quite transparent, I mean,
you really went point by point on this.
It says, OK, no, our prices aren't double the the
rate of inflation.
But you did acknowledge right then and there our prices
have gone up 40%
in the last five years.
Yeah. Is that more than other chain restaurants in your
category have gone up?
Yeah. I wanted to be transparent to our customers,
first of all. That's where that's where I start.
You know, McDonald's, obviously we we get a lot of
scrutiny,
a lot of focus. And so I wanted to be
transparent.
That's roughly the same as many other restaurants.
We still feel like we're incredibly competitive and actually offer
more value and affordability with the $5 meal deal,
local deals or deals on the app.
Can I ask just another kind of unrelated question?
But a lot of people,
we've done a million stories on people,
on Ozempic, people who are on these other things,
which is, you know, changing the way they eat,
changing their behavior patterns. Do you think that that plays
into your bottom line?
We will always stay connected to where consumers are.
If you had me in the studio four years ago,
we would have been talking about Kovid and everything McDonald's
was doing to serve a Big Mac safely.
So if customers move to taking more,
you know, products like Ozempic,
we'll make sure to be there for whatever needs they
have coming from restaurants like McDonald's.
That's like the opposite of super size
mini burger and a tiny fry.
It could be there could be more snacking.
There could be more protein.
That could be one of the things that that manifests
itself in our industry.
It's huge. I mean, these weight loss drugs have changed
so much.
Yeah. Of the food, the grocery industry,
the diet industry, certainly the fast food industry.
Have you noticed it? We haven't seen it yet,
actually, in our numbers. OK.
Wow. Joe Erlinger, thank you.
Thank you, Joe. We appreciate it.
Alright, time now. Another check of the weather.
We got Mr. Roker. Hey,
Al. What about the MC Rib?
Yeah,
I knew he was gonna ask about him.
He wants the MC rib.
MC rib year round. And just that way.
I I did ask. Just asking for a friend's coming
later this year.
I did
ask about the shake machine.
Yeah, that's the headline. MC ribs coming back.
MC Ribs. Alright, cool. Broke a little news.