McDonald’s Hopes McValue Will End Battered Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 23, 8:02AM EST

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McDonald’s Hopes McValue Will End Battered Sales — © Nord68 / Wikimedia Commons

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD | MCD Price Prediction) continues to battle lackluster sales, and its solutions have gotten no traction. It has announced one more push. The fast food chain calls the new initiative McValue, and it will become a key part of the menu next year.

McValue, which will launch on January 7, is a series of menu additions. At the top of this list is the $5 Meal Deal it began to offer earlier this year. Management was worried that customers believed McDoald’s had gotten too expensive. The $5 Meal Deal includes a McDouble hamburger, Chicken McNuggets (4 pieces), Small fries, and a small Coca-Cola. The McDouble can be replaced with a McChicken sandwich.

McValue adds several new options. The broadest is “Buy One, Add One for $1”. The items that qualify from the breakfast menu include the Sausage McMuffin Sausage Biscuit, Sausage Burrito, and Hash Browns. Those included in the lunch and dinner menu are the 6-pc. Chicken McNuggets, Double Cheeseburger, McChicken, and Small Fries. McDonald’s will also offer special deals for people who use its app.

When McDonald’s launched the new menu options, Joe Erlinger, President of McDonald’s USA, said, “When it comes to value, we know there’s no one-size-fits-all. We’ve worked closely with our franchisees to create a new platform that will let our customers define value on their own terms.” He should have added that the strategy must help boost the company’s revenue.

McDonald’s most recent quarterly results disappointed investors. Revenue rose only 3% to $6.9 billion, EPS dropped 1% to $3.13, and US same-store sales rose only .3%.

McDonald’s difficulties have pushed its stock down 2% this year while the S&P 500 is 25% higher. McValue is the latest attempt to get the share price back up. By the end of the first quarter of 2025, investors will know whether it worked–or not.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.