McDonald’s new value platform will feature local, digital and national offers. | Photo courtesy of McDonald’s.
McDonald’s is doubling down on its effort to court more budget diners with a new “McValue” platform that will feature various local, national and digital offers, the company said Friday.
The newest feature of the value platform will feature a “Buy One, Get One for $1″ feature on certain items throughout the day.
It includes breakfast items like the Sausage McMuffin or Sausage Biscuit, Sausage Burrito and hash browns in the morning or a 6-Piece Chicken McNuggets, Double Cheeseburger, McChicken or small fries in the afternoon.
The offer will also feature the company’s existing $5 Meal Deal as well as various local and digital offers.
The value platform is set to make its debut on Jan. 7.
The $5 Meal Deal has been extended to next summer.
“When it comes to value, we know there’s no one-size-fits-all,” Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said in a statement. “We worked closely with our franchisees to create a new platform that will let our customers define value on their own terms.”
McDonald’s has been set on making value a key part of its marketing efforts for months, since persistently weak traffic began hurting sales this year as customers frustrated by menu price inflation visited the chain’s restaurants less often.
The company kicked off its $5 Meal Deal in June, featuring a 4-piece McNuggets, small fries, small drink and a choice of a McChicken or a McDouble.
Company executives said last month that they were working on a “more holistic,” permanent branded offer that would feature local, digital and national offers.
They argued that the value push over the summer helped generate more traffic. Same-store sales rose 0.3% last quarter, with traffic “slightly negative,” an improvement from earlier in the year.
“When we launched the $5 Meal Deal, we wanted to see that it would improve value perception with the consumer, and we’ve seen evidence of that,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts. “We wanted to see that it could engage the low-income consumer, in particular. We’ve seen evidence of that. We wanted to see that it could drive guest counts. We were seeing strong evidence of that.”
McDonald’s has historically used some sort of value platform to court lower-income diners. But the company shifted away from value marketing in recent years, particularly as inflation threatened profitability.
The company has focused much of its price-based promotions on its mobile app, including periodically aggressive deals such as 20% off customer orders.
Local markets, however, have had their own offers. One market, in fact, created the $5 Meal Deal that has since been adopted nationally.
The McValue platform will feature both those local and digital offers.
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