McDonald’s needed to win Americans back. Then came an E. coli outbreak
CNN
Even for a brand as gargantuan as McDonald’s, the last few months have been … a lot.
Even for a brand as gargantuan as McDonald’s, the last few months have been… a lot. Before an E. coli outbreak was revealed last week, the burger chain had already become an unwitting character in competing political narratives and a target of scorn from customers who felt the golden arches had lost their shimmer. Even the “Grimace effect” — the New York Mets’ winning streak embodied by McDonald’s goofy purple mascot — petered out in the playoffs, depriving the world of a Subway Series. All of that (minus the Grimace thing, in fairness) will be weighing on McDonald’s when it reports third-quarter earnings early Tuesday and gives investors a better sense of how it plans to address food safety concerns for a brand that is known for its usually stringent food safety guidelines. “Given the volume of food that they go through, how infrequently this happens to McDonald’s is a testament to the effort that they take,” Chris Gaulke, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration, told the Associated Press last week. The timing of the outbreak is especially challenging for McDonald’s as it has been trying to win back customers who’ve been put off by higher prices. CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts a year ago that even as McDonald’s was jacking up prices, “the consumer is tolerating it well.” That tolerance didn’t last long, though.
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