What's going on?

After some lean years, McDonald�s continued its turnaround, beating Wall Street�s expectations for sales in the recent quarter and experimenting with new ways to drive long-term growth� did you want fries with that too?!

What does this mean?

McDonald�s had some tough years until a new CEO took over in 2015 and announced a turnaround plan. This included menu changes like fresh beef Quarter Pounders and customizable sandwiches, as well as the introduction of mobile ordering and delivery. This strategy was coupled with an increasing focus on its �value� menu, like the McPick 2 offer (2 items for $5). The combination, which McDonald�s refers to as a high/low menu strategy, is apparently helping to bring in customers and improve McDonald�s profitability (a.k.a. margins).

Why should I care?

For the stock: McDonald�s wants to work with more franchisees.

A key part of the turnaround plan was increasing the proportion of McDonald�s restaurants that are owned and operated by franchisees � this brings down the cost of operating those branches and makes revenues from them more predictable (as franchisees pay rent and royalty payments to McDonald�s). It appears McDonald�s is on the right path: it completed the switch for 4,000 of its restaurants in China and Hong Kong over a year ahead of schedule.

For you personally: McDonald�s really wants to deliver to you.

McDonald�s has offered delivery in Asia and the Middle East for years and has recently been testing delivery in some countries with UberEATS. Now, it�s targeting delivery as a growth opportunity, as almost 75% of the population in its biggest markets lives near a McDonald�s � a huge untapped market of people close enough to deliver to easily. In July, the company said it had expanded its delivery service to 13 countries � so watch out for McDonald�s delivery setting up near you!