An Urban's Rural View

Pity the poor farmer who tries to anticipate the public's changing taste in food. Even the retailers and restaurants in face-to-face contact with consumers sometimes fail to catch the latest wave.

That's the moral of the McDonald's story. Over the decades the fast-food chain has expanded to more than 35,000 restaurants worldwide. But in recent years average per-store sales have sagged; in 2014, they were down 1% from the previous year (http://tiny.cc/…).

In Don Thompson's less-than-three years as CEO McDonald's stock zigzagged sideways (http://tiny.cc/…). Meanwhile the S & P 500 was rising more than 50%. With unhappy investors circling like vultures, the company had little choice but to replace Thompson.

So what went wrong? It's a fair guess McDonald's doesn't know for sure. If it did, it would have fixed the problem rather than endure five straight quarters of declining sales.

Many other people -- security analysts and journalists, in particular -- think they do know. Over the last several months the restaurateur's problems have received almost as much free analysis as Seattle's Super Bowl play calling.

But while the Seahawks'' post-game analysts tended to sound the same note -- "should have given the ball to Marshawn Lynch" -- the Monday-morning burger flippers have been all over the fast-food parking lot:

-- McDonald's has failed to respond to "the global movement to healthier food," an equities strategist told Forbes (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- The golden arches have lost luster for customers in their twenties and thirties, a Wall Street Journal reporter reported (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- McDonald's needs to "simplify" its menu, getting rid of non-selling salads, wraps and fruit options adopted to mollify foodie critics, Holman Jenkins wrote on the Journal's editorial page (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- McDonald's is "running wild" with its "I'm Lovin' It" and "Pay with Lovin" marketing campaigns, making it look like it's trying too hard to be trendy, wrote another Journal editorial writer -- a self-confessed Egg McMuffin lover (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- McDonald's customers in the U.S. are "confused by the nearly 200 choices on its menu, suspicious of the ingredients and preservatives in its food and enraged by the way it seems to treat its workers," the Economist opined (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- McDonald's puts so many ingredients -- 19 -- in its French fries that a CNBC reporter wondered if the recipe included potatoes (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- The chicken sandwiches are "tasteless" and the ambience "abysmal," a celebrity chef and a New York Times columnist concluded after a reconnoitering lunch at a McDonald's outlet on New York's Third Avenue (http://tiny.cc/…).

-- McDonald's hamburgers ranked worse in a Consumer Reports survey than those of 20 major competitors (http://tiny.cc/…).

Some of these assessments may seem like piling on after the play is whistled dead, and yet there were others: Offer customers more customization; express clearer values; tell a better story; franchise the remaining company-owned restaurants; focus. Even those don't exhaust the list.

McDonald's has embraced some of these ideas; it is, for example, simplifying its menu and redesigning some of its restaurants. Still, the company could be forgiven for feeling as dazed as a running back smashed to the ground by a 250-pound linebacker.

It's not just that there's so much advice but that so much of it contradicts other advice or on-the-ground reality. Take the charge that McDonald's is ignoring the healthy-food trend. It sounds plausible -- Chipotle, for example, has won business by promising "food integrity." But the same charge could be leveled at Burger King, and yet Burger King's sales are rising (http://tiny.cc/…).

Or take the complaint that 200 is too many items for a fast-food menu. Again, sounds sensible. Fast-food is supposed to be fast; complexity slows everything down and makes diners wait. But if 200 is too many, explain, please, how Starbucks continues to star even though it now offers 255 menu items (http://tiny.cc/…).

And while it's easy to snark at French fries with 19 ingredients, the Times' celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, pronounced them "excellent." How could they be improved? "I wouldn't change anything."

Is Mickey D's burger the worst? Maybe, but the Times columnist actually thought it was "pretty good, as long as you like soft and squishy."

It will be up to the new CEO, Steve Easterbrook, to sift through this grab bag of sometimes-conflicting ideas, evaluate customers' changing tastes and come up with a new winning formula. If, as seems likely, the public is of as many minds about what it wants in food as the free-advice givers, he's got his work cut out for him.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

(CZ)

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