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Debunking McDonald's service time criticism

Customers and investors prefer innovation and quality over short wait times.

December 18, 2014 by Darrel Suderman — President, Food Technical Consulting

I have to admit, I sympathize with McDonald’s for the criticism they have received for longer service times. It seems the critics want to blame everything from food quality, share value, and sales declines on their service times. Investors and private equity groups are quick to criticize McDonald’s for falling short on restaurant metrics they poorly understand. But to their credit, they do understand financial metrics, but not operational metrics. They read P & L statements very well, but rarely correlate operations metrics with various financial sensitivity analyses.

McDonald’s positive response to demand for more new products

Restaurant insiders understand that a direct relationship exists between service times and the quantity and quality of innovative new products. It wasn’t that many years ago that investors wanted McDonald’s to expand their menu offering – and they did! They even optimized their assembly line with new and improved holding environments. In summary, they did everything right to provide more menu offerings, with better quality and food security best practices. Jack in the Box executed a similar service and menu model while continuing to be the industry food safety leader.

Consider the Chick-fil-A model

I have even heard comments that McDonald’s needs to implement some of the service model best practices used by Chick-fil-A. Oh, really? My personal experience is that Chick-fil-A has lengthy service times with a large menu offering, but I never hear of criticism directed at CFA’s service time. I believe the reason that CFA doesn’t receive service time criticism is that customers are happy with the product quality when they receive their filled order. The simple translation is, "Customers prefer quality over service time." And satisfied customers always return for their next shopping experience on a more frequent basis. Customers also like a clean environment with the bright shiny faces that we see every day at CFA.

McDonald’s innovation leadership

I admit that one factor that can affect service time is the execution of innovative new products – and this is an area that McDonald’s has excelled over Chick-fil-A. But investors and consumers demand innovation even if it takes longer to prepare. I can point to several innovations at McDonald’s like the breakfast biscuit and muffin menu products, supplier biscuit technology, Cinnamelts, supplier quality assurance systems, back-of-house equipment and service line improvements, etc. In my opinion, I will take innovation over longer service times any day. And for anyone who doubts this approach, just look at the stock valuation growth over the past 25 years at Apple! Case closed.

The 10 pillars of food innovation spring workshop is March 16-18 in Denver. This course is based on several highly regarded Harvard Business Press books that have been applied to the food industry – as well as Denise Lee Yohn’s acclaimed book "What Great Brands Do." To pre-register or to request a private workshop for your company, contact me at dsuderman@foodbevbiz.com or 303-471-1443. 

About Darrel Suderman

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