Sales at McDonald’s softened last quarter as traffic to its U.S. restaurants slowed, the fast-food giant reported on Tuesday.
Consumers have been squeezed by inflation, particularly rising gasoline prices since the start of the war in Iran. Sales at McDonald’s stores opened for at least a year in the United States rose 0.8 percent in the three months through June, its most sluggish growth since early 2025.
While executives at the restaurant chain acknowledged the “constrained consumer environment,” they also said much of the quarter’s weaker results were because of self-inflicted mistakes.
Business slowed significantly after a strong start to the year, Chris Kempczinski, the chief executive of McDonald’s, said on a call with investors early Tuesday.
“We don’t have a strategy problem,” he said. “We simply didn’t execute at the level we needed to in the second quarter.”
Inconsistent pricing at its restaurants for a value program offering 10 items that each cost $3 or less was the biggest drag on sales. Only about two-thirds of the franchisees, which set the prices for food at the restaurants they own, followed the company’s suggested pricing, Mr. Kempczinski said.
He said the restaurant chain was communicating with franchisees to encourage them to adopt the suggested pricing structure. “With those folks that are not, you know, complying, as you would imagine, their business results are a lot softer than those who did comply,” Mr. Kempczinski said.
McDonald’s also pulled back on some popular deals, while introducing too many new products or promotions back-to-back in the quarter that overwhelmed its restaurant staff and confused customers, executives said.
In addition to the value menu, McDonald’s rolled out an extensive new lineup of refresher beverages in May. That launch was quickly followed by its FIFA World Cup soccer promotions in June, which included a variety of meal deals and collectible plastic cups.
“Our restaurant teams were overwhelmed by too many deployments in the quarter, which led to less efficient restaurant operations,” Mr. Kempczinski said. “This impacted customer service times, and as service times went up, satisfaction scores went down.”
He added that the FIFA campaign had underperformed expectations.
McDonald’s shares were up 1.8 percent, to $270.05, Tuesday morning.
Aiming to jump start growth, McDonald’s said that Skye Anderson, the company’s chief operating officer for the U.S. business, would become its president, effective immediately. She replaces Joe Erlinger, who spent seven years at the helm of the U.S. unit. There are about 14,000 restaurants in the United States, roughly 30 percent of the chain’s total global restaurant count, which makes up about 40 percent of its total sales. Mr. Erlinger will remain as an adviser to the company until early 2027, the company said.
Ms. Anderson was promoted in March to chief operating officer of the U.S. unit, a new role, but has spent more than 26 years at McDonald’s, starting from an entry-level finance position in Australia.
Ms. Anderson “understands the opportunities available to us in the U.S. to unlock superior performance, and her transition as chief operating officer means that she’s ready to hit the ground running as U.S. president,” Mr. Kempczinski said on the earnings call.
The relatively lackluster results in the United States came as the company recently unveiled plans for a new look in its restaurants, which includes a more open layout design and revamped drive-through lanes. The plan is likely to require significant investments by its franchisees, which own more than 90 percent of McDonald’s outlets around the world, to remodel buildings and install new technology and equipment.
Same-store sales overall at McDonald’s rose 1.3 percent in the second quarter, with the U.S. weakness offset by stronger results in Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan, the company said. Global revenue for the chain, which includes fees from franchisees, increased 4 percent from a year earlier, to $7 billion in the second quarter. Net profit rose 5 percent, to nearly $2.4 billion.
High cost pressures and weaker consumer spending also resulted in McDonald’s slowing down some of its aggressive push to open new stores. The company had planned to hit 50,000 stores globally by the end of 2027, up from 45,356 at the end of last year. Now, executives said, the company plans to reach that goal by the end of 2028.
“We continue to believe there’s significant opportunity for us to continue to grow the brand and add more restaurant locations,” Ian Borden, the chief financial officer, said on the call. “We felt we needed to kind of — what I’ll call — slightly adjust our pace to make sure that we were going to deliver the right level of return.”
