This week on Nation's Restaurant News the top story was McDonald’s CEO: ‘The battleground is with the low-income consumer’. McDonald’s reported mixed results from its Q4 and full-year earnings report Monday morning. The restaurant company’s quarterly same-store sales, at 3.4%, fell short of expectations and were weighed down by the war in the Middle East. Domestically, same-store sales were up 4.3%, mostly in line with expectations but well below the company’s performance in its most recent quarters. U.S. same-store sales in Q4 2022 were up over 10%, for instance, while the company is up over 30% versus where it was in 2019. CEO Chris Kempczinski said he expects the rest of this year to play out similarly to Q4, which is “normalized growth.”
In other news, Burger King this week launched its first Million Dollar Whopper Contest in the United States, offering the monetary bounty with the fame of having a sandwich creation featured at restaurants nationwide. The Miami-based burger division of the Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International Inc. said customers can submit their ingredient combination via the artificial intelligence website, BK.com/MDW, or on the smartphone app through March 17. Entries can feature eight toppings and require a free Royal Perks loyalty account to log in.
Also, welcome to the Burger Showdown, the seventh showdown from Nation’s Restaurant News. In this iteration, we are pitting eight burger chains from all over the country against one another. Burgers are ubiquitous among American consumers. Just look at the top 10 chains. Two of them are burger players — McDonald’s and Burger King. According to Technomic, burgers appear on 41.2% of U.S. restaurant menus.
See what else was trending on NRN.com this week.
