McDonald’s admits that getting rid of this beloved menu offer was a ‘bad trade,’ as new $3 value menu disappoints

A new $3 value menu didn’t deliver as much as hoped for—but McDonald’s still posted a profitable quarter.

The fast-food giant reported its latest earnings on Tuesday morning, which showed that global sales increased 5% to $37 billion, and comparable sales in the United States were up 0.8%. That’s notable, considering that restaurants have been taking it on the chin as diners contend with high prices for food, gas, and just about everything else, too. A year ago, for comparison, U.S. comparable sales were up 2.5%—so, there has been a slowdown.

And it seems to have cost at least one executive his job. Skye Anderson, a longtime McDonald’s executive, was named president of McDonald’s USA, replacing Joe Erlinger, who decided to leave the company after seven years in the role.

Also notable was the fact that one of the chain’s attempts at reaching out to those diners has apparently fallen flat. Specifically, McDonald’s had rolled out a new “McValue” menu in April that featured several items priced at less than $3 each. But company leadership, during an earnings conference call, says that the tactic underperformed, in part because not all restaurants offered it.

“The 10 items for under $3 [promotion] has not delivered against our expectations. Part of that was due to the fact that we’re getting really inconsistent execution,” said Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO and chairman. “Only about 60% to 65% of our system is currently executing the recommended pricing architecture with the 10 items for under $3.”

That new McValue menu effectively replaced an offer that allowed diners to buy one, get one for $1 on certain menu options, which was originally introduced in 2019, and that was seemingly a hit with customers. While the new menu may have ended up saving some diners money (depending on the specifics of their order), the earnings results seem to indicate that swapping the promotions has not paid off. 

In fact, Kempczinski said that pulling existing digital offers was a “bad trade.”

“That ended up being a bad trade. Putting in a program that didn’t deliver and taking away a lot of digital offers, and the buy-one, add-one program,” he said. “Two-thirds of our miss in the quarter was related to that bad trade. So, we’ve got some work now that we need to do to get that fixed.”

After the earnings release, McDonald’s stock was up 1.75% as of midday Tuesday.