McDonald\u2019s reported its worst quarterly sales for the United States since the height of the pandemic in 2020, the latest restaurant chain to be affected by America\u2019s turbulent economic environment.<\/p>\n
The burger giant reported U.S. same-store sales fell 3.6%, the largest three-month drop since Q2 2020, when they plunged 8.7%. Forecasts had been for a decline of just 1.7%. <\/p>\n
\u2018Consumers today are grappling with uncertainty,\u2019 McDonald\u2019s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a statement, as the chain cited lower guest counts. <\/p>\n
In a follow-up call with investors, McDonald\u2019s executives said that traffic among middle-income diners fell by \u2018nearly double digits\u2019 alongside an ongoing drop-off among low-income ones. As an example, they said more people appear to be skipping breakfast entirely to cut back on spending, or eating breakfast at home.<\/p>\n
\u2018People are just visiting less,\u2019 they said. <\/p>\n
High-income traffic, meanwhile, remained stable, they said. <\/p>\n
That reflects the economy writ large: While less-well-off consumers rein in transactions to focus on essentials, wealthy consumers continue to spend freely.<\/p>\n
McDonald\u2019s is the latest restaurant chain to report weak financial results amid signs that consumers are pulling back on discretionary spending. Chipotle, Domino\u2019s, Pizza Hut, Shake Shack and Starbucks all saw slowing or declining sales in their quarter, with many citing particular weakness among lower-income consumers. <\/p>\n
McDonald\u2019s also reported revenues that missed forecasts for the third time in four quarters. <\/p>\n
The more volatile economic environment that\u2019s been accelerated by President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs policies is also being felt abroad. <\/strong><\/p>\n On the call, company officials said that while the McDonald\u2019s brand hadn\u2019t been affected by worsening perceptions of the U.S. by overseas consumers, its internal surveys had picked up a notable uptick in anti-American sentiment, particularly among diners in northern Europe and Canada. <\/p>\n \u2018We have seen \u2026 an increase in people in various markets saying they\u2019re going to be cutting back on purchases of American brands,\u2019 they said. <\/p>\n It nevertheless maintained its full-year financial outlook, including plans to open 2,200 locations, which it said should help boost sales growth by slightly more than 2%. It said a promotional tie-in with the \u2018Minecraft Movie\u2019 had been a hit, and that its refreshed value offerings continued to position it strongly compared with competitors. <\/p>\n Still, officials said on the call that they remained \u201ccautious about consumer sentiment.\u201d <\/p>\n Shares fell 1.6% in early trading.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n McDonald\u2019s reported its worst quarterly sales for the United States since the height of the pandemic in 2020, the latest restaurant chain to be affected by America\u2019s turbulent economic environment. The burger giant reported U.S. same-store sales fell 3.6%, the largest three-month drop since Q2 2020, when they plunged 8.7%. Forecasts had been for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}