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>“McDonald’s secret sauce is really commercial surveillance,” Journo is search of a narrative that isn't there. McDonalds could stop tracking customers tomorro

>“McDonald’s secret sauce is really commercial surveillance,” Journo is search of a narrative that isn't there. McDonalds could stop tracking customers tomorrow and people would still be eating the same food there in 50 years. The secret sauce is has more to do with actual sauce than anything claimed here.

xp84 2mo ago
Yes and no. Businesses like these succeed and fail at the margins. If McDonalds declines in popularity too much, franchisees start folding and the whole operation could absolutely collapse. All their competitors are looking for ways to exploit areas of weakness, whether it's "value" or "speed" or "quality." Most of the "loyalty" regimes are organized to work on the "value" side of the equation, since the only way a promo (like "free fries" that I received yesterday) has any ROI, is if it's designed in a way to bring in the "right" people who will spend enough money, and to have the way to contact them going forward to bring them back again and again. By contrast, handing out free fries to everyone who walks in the door is not going to be worth the cost.
- zbentley 2mo ago
  Franchise failure rates don’t bear out that being a real risk. However, McDonald’s is publicly traded, and investor pressure to improve at the margins may make a business that is fundamentally well served by being change-averse do stupid things.
  - xp84 2mo ago
    Other chains have had lots of franchises fail though. A&W used to be big. Long John Silvers. Are you saying McD specifically can’t fail? Or that none can?
    - whywhywhywhy 2mo ago
      A&W peaked at 2400 locations, Long John Silvers at 1080. McDonalds is currently 46,000, 13k of those in the US alone. It's just not even comparable.
      - xp84 2mo ago
        Kmart once had 2,323 stores in the US, and today they have just this one comical one[1] (the picture is worth it, trust me). Nobody's too big to fail, and the way you fail is by making no innovation in your business, not doing optimizations that smarter competitors do, etc. (which was exactly what Kmart spent the 80s and 90s doing). McDonald's would absolutely decline if they simply abandoned all 'loyalty program' ideas, while every competitor leverages them, because those competitors will take customers away little by little. Fewer customers, less money to justify renovations, less people want to open new franchises in the best spots, leading to fewer customers, in a cycle. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1jiusko/the_last_us_kmart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1jiusko/the_last_us_...

xp84 2mo ago

Yes and no. Businesses like these succeed and fail at the margins. If McDonalds declines in popularity too much, franchisees start folding and the whole operation could absolutely collapse. All their competitors are looking for ways to exploit areas of weakness, whether it's "value" or "speed" or "quality." Most of the "loyalty" regimes are organized to work on the "value" side of the equation, since the only way a promo (like "free fries" that I received yesterday) has any ROI, is if it's designed in a way to bring in the "right" people who will spend enough money, and to have the way to contact them going forward to bring them back again and again. By contrast, handing out free fries to everyone who walks in the door is not going to be worth the cost.

zbentley 2mo ago
Franchise failure rates don’t bear out that being a real risk. However, McDonald’s is publicly traded, and investor pressure to improve at the margins may make a business that is fundamentally well served by being change-averse do stupid things.
- xp84 2mo ago
  Other chains have had lots of franchises fail though. A&W used to be big. Long John Silvers. Are you saying McD specifically can’t fail? Or that none can?
  - whywhywhywhy 2mo ago
    A&W peaked at 2400 locations, Long John Silvers at 1080. McDonalds is currently 46,000, 13k of those in the US alone. It's just not even comparable.
    - xp84 2mo ago
      Kmart once had 2,323 stores in the US, and today they have just this one comical one[1] (the picture is worth it, trust me). Nobody's too big to fail, and the way you fail is by making no innovation in your business, not doing optimizations that smarter competitors do, etc. (which was exactly what Kmart spent the 80s and 90s doing). McDonald's would absolutely decline if they simply abandoned all 'loyalty program' ideas, while every competitor leverages them, because those competitors will take customers away little by little. Fewer customers, less money to justify renovations, less people want to open new franchises in the best spots, leading to fewer customers, in a cycle. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1jiusko/the_last_us_kmart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1jiusko/the_last_us_...