CEO Chris Kempczinski also hinted at refining plans with CosMc’s, including its potential to do more within existing restaurants
McDonald’s has a delicate balance to strike this year to get back the momentum it had prior to its October E. coli outbreak.
As executives have shared before, value will be a big part of the equation, driven by the new McValue platform. The other part is a “strong pipeline of creative marketing ideas that will delight our fans and will provide full margin check growth,” according to chief executive officer Chris Kempczinski. In other words, new menu news that doesn’t fall into the everyday affordable price or bundle buckets and therefore doesn’t erode margins.
Examples of this are the chain’s “best burgers,” first introduced nationwide last year. They are expected to be in all global markets by the end of 2026, while its “Big Arch” burger is also expected to hit more international markets this year.
Where executives believe the chain’s biggest opportunity is, however, is with its chicken portfolio. Kempczinski said the potential exists to gain another percentage point of chicken market share by the end of 2026 through the continued rollout of the McCrispy platform, expected in nearly all markets by the end of this year.
The snack wrap will also return to the menu this year after a hiatus and to the delight of many disgruntled fans who have been petitioning for its return since 2020. McDonald’s will also “continue to pulse in the Chicken Big Mac as a limited-time only offering over time,” Kempczinski said, adding that the product helped generate market share growth in 2024 with positive incrementality.
Finally, there will also be a “new chicken strip offering” in the U.S. this year, though details from the company’s fourth quarter earnings call Monday morning were sparse.
That said, gaining chicken market share, particularly in the domestic market, won’t be easy. If we had to pull the hottest category of the moment, chicken — and specifically tenders (or “strips”) — is up there. Consider the staggering growth of Raising Cane’s, for instance, or the success non-chicken chains like Wendy’s and Burger King have had with snack wraps. Then, there are the chicken chains themselves — Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, Wingstop, Zaxby’s, etc. — ramping up their chicken tenders (or strips or Fingerz) offerings, many alongside new sauce innovations. As it looks to deepen its U.S. footprint, Jollibee’s is leveraging the protein’s demand by introducing new chicken tenders with a signature tender sauce. Even Taco Bell is testing chicken strips.
In a bit of a prognostication move, Taco Bell’s sister chain KFC declared a “chicken tenders battle” in October coinciding with the launch of its new Original Recipe Tenders. That was about two months before KFC launched its spinoff concept called Saucy, which is focused on chicken tenders and sauces.
A little over a year or so ago, McDonald’s executives shared that the company’s chicken sales are now on par with its beef sales, a somewhat surprising development given that the chain was founded on 15-cent hamburgers. But this parity underscores the chain’s urgency to have a strong chicken presence to win in an intensifying category. That category doesn’t just include other quick-service players, by the way. Between 2020 and 2024, chicken tenders sales at grocery stores grew 104%, according to Circana data.
Chicken is clearly what consumers want to consume and the world’s biggest restaurant company by sales is jockeying in earnest to make sure it’s top of mind.
McDonald’s is also bullish on beverages
Of course, the beverage space is also hot (see, for example, Dutch Bros, 7 Brew, Scooter’s, Ziggi’s, and the like) and McDonald’s is doubling down there as well. The beverage category, Kempczinski said, is growing about twice as fast as the rest of the McDonald’s business and with “very strong margins.”
“We are very bullish on the opportunity in beverages, and we think there's a lot of growth potential in beverages, both in coffee, whether it's hot or iced, but also in some of these other beverage areas that you're seeing emerging like refreshers, like energy drinks, etc.,” he said.
McDonald’s is capitalizing on that opportunity in a few ways, including through its McCafé platform and its fledgling spinoff concept CosMc’s.
“The learning with CosMc's continues. … What we're learning is there's certainly an opportunity in that space. The smaller units tend to perform better. You want to drive-thru with that,” Kempczinski said, adding that CosMc’s will close three end-cap locations with no drive-thru and will open two smaller formats with a drive-thru this year. He also hinted at the possibility of translating CosMc’s menu/model into existing McDonald’s restaurants.
“As we refine our plans, I think you'll hear more from us about how much of that opportunity needs to come through new units with something standalone like CosMc's or how much of the potential do we think we can capture by doing more within the existing restaurants, and there's a lot of … thinking about what we might be able to do to capture that opportunity in the current restaurant,” he said.
Contact Alicia Kelso at [email protected]
You May Also Like
