Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published on Franchise Times, a sibling publication of Food On Demand.
McDonald’s is pledging to spend $8.5 billion through 2036 to help its franchisees accelerate restaurant modernization, technology deployment and operational improvements as part of its companywide plan to add market share, expand margins and improve hospitality.
About $5 billion of that will be allocated by 2030 through a combination of rent relief and capital support.
The investments are part of the new “McDonald’s Next” strategy, which aims to make the burger chain the first choice for more customers, while building upon the capabilities established through “Accelerating the Arches,” its global corporate growth strategy launched in late 2020.
“McDonald’s has the unmatched scale, customer insights, brand loyalty, and operational capabilities to not only adapt to the next wave of change in our industry, but to turn it into an advantage,” McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a press release. “We are confident that executing across the key components of Next will unlock stronger restaurant economics, generate attractive returns for the company, our franchisees and shareholders, and increase capacity to keep investing in growth.”
Goals and objectives
The company first introduced “Restaurant Next” in June at its convention and discussed it on its second quarter earnings call.
It’s “our new growth strategy with a clear ambition to be more customers’ first choice,” Kempczinski said on the call. “We’ll do this by improving the taste and quality of our food, engaging and cooperating with our fans in exciting new ways and simplifying our restaurants so our crew can deliver great hospitality for our guests.”
Company officials provided more details today. McDonald’s Next’s enhancements, which are intended to change how restaurants operate, target four core areas:
• Menu Next improves food taste and quality via execution and innovation to make McDonald’s customers’ first choice and get them to order more frequently.
• Consumer Next personalizes customer relationships to increase visits.
• Restaurant Next increases productivity through better execution, simplifying operations, modernizing restaurant design and deploying ArchIQ, its Google-powered artificial intelligence operating system that will handle drive-thru orders and backend management.
• People Next equips employees to improve hospitality, creating a better experience that results in repeat visits.
Through these investments and improvements, McDonald’s hopes to gain 1.5 percentage points of market share in chicken and beverage categories by 2030 while maintaining its leadership in beef. It aims to reach low-to-mid 50 percent operating margins by 2030 by cutting costs by 2.5 percent and adding about $100,000 in annual cash flow, and increase system sales next year by 2.5 percent, which would moderate to 2 percent by 2030.
Global systemwide sales for the burger giant, which is 95 percent franchised, topped $139 billion in 2025, according to Franchise Times Top 400 data. It has more than 13,700 domestic restaurants and another 31,000-plus in international markets.
“McDonald’s scale and financial strength reflects decades of disciplined execution, prudent decision-making, and a proven ability to create long-term value,” said Ian Borden, executive vice president and global chief financial officer, in a statement. “McDonald’s Next builds on that foundation while allocating capital to drive growth and productivity. The financial targets we are introducing today are grounded in the expected economics of Restaurant Next and the opportunities we see ahead.”
Maeve Webster, president of the food and beverage consultancy Menu Matters, said the brand’s focus on increasing the use of technology and AI to improve efficiency makes sense, but she’s glad it’s not happening at the expense of human interaction.
“Given the ongoing consumer need for human-to-human connection and the evolving need for proof of humanity in the face of tech and AI advancements, putting people first—customers and employees—is exactly what they should be doing,” Webster, president of the food and beverage consultancy Menu Matters said over email. “Too many QSRs have replaced human-based hospitality with tech. Ultimately that reduces customer service to something purely transactional, which is not the direction most consumers are heading mentally or emotionally.”
Leading the push
Leading McDonald’s through these changes is Skye Anderson, who the company promoted from chief operating officer to president of McDonald’s U.S. She takes the helm as the company has been facing increased competition and mixed financial results.
Its systemwide sales grew 4 percent during the second quarter compared to a year ago, and comparable sales were up 1.3 percent, according to its earnings report.
But in the U.S., “after a solid start to the year, the business slowed significantly, posting comparable sales growth of 0.8 percent in the quarter,” Kempczinski said during the August earnings call. “That was below our expectations.”
The company is facing stronger competition from restaurants like Burger King—whose charismatic President Tom Curtis publicly took comments from angry customers that led to operational improvements—and Taco Bell, which outside of a cyclospora outbreak this year has shown strong results in recent years due to innovation and technology, such as mobile ordering.
McDonald’s has struggled to execute its value menus and has pulled back marketing to work on fixing them, wrote Andrew Strelzik, an analyst from BMO Capital markets, in a research report following the Q2 earnings call.
Expanding its current 17 percent share of the global chicken market makes sense and though there are hurdles, such as labor costs and fryer capacities, he wrote, the company already has hand-breaded chicken in around 10,000 stores globally.
Focusing on the chicken and beverage enhancements also makes sense to analysts from TD Cowen. McDonald’s struggles with value menus come while Burger King and Taco Bell built “more holistic strategic playbooks,” they wrote in an August report, adding, “Beverages will be the easier plan to execute, with minimal investment in equipment and labor needed.”
Webster agrees that beverages and, particularly, chicken provide the company with opportunities for growth, especially compared with beef prices high and unlikely to fall anytime soon. She’s impressed with brand’s willingness to look at opportunities for improvement.
“It’s great that McDonald’s is willing to take a fresh look at its system from top to bottom,” she said. “As one of the largest chains in the world, that size can often bring a comfort that their position is unassailable. The reality is nothing is guaranteed to any competitor, so assuming there’s room to change and improve on all levels shows they are willing to admit that and do what needs to be done to evolve and maintain that position.”
