• by Tanya Gazdik , October 29, 2024

McDonald’s same-store sales rose 0.3%, but traffic remained “slightly negative” last quarter.

“Marketing and value helped lead to a moderate improvement in sales and traffic at McDonald’s domestic restaurants last quarter, the company said on Tuesday, but the company missed Wall Street expectations on profitability and investors and others may be more concerned with what’s happened since the quarter ended,” according to Restaurant Business Online.

The fast food retailer received some unwanted attention due to an E.coli outbreak that led the company to pull Quarter Pounders from the menu in a dozen states.

“The chain’s speedy response appears to be effective in helping to quell too much public pessimism thus far,” per MediaPost’s QSR Insider.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski apologized to customers and said the company is “committed to making this right."

“Executives told investors they believed that the public health scare was contained and did not think it would have a material impact on sales,” according to the BBC. “But they acknowledged it had added to the pressure the company has been under, as budget-conscious customers eat out less.”

McDonald’s is projecting the food safety scare will not affect its full-year finances.

“But they did acknowledge that public perception issues could linger; regaining trust around food safety and rebuilding momentum in its business could be a challenge, they said,” according to The New York Times. “Since the start of the E. coli outbreak, the company’s daily U.S. sales have fallen and fewer customers have visited its restaurants, Ian Borden, McDonald’s chief financial officer, told investors on Tuesday.”

Customer visits in the U.S. fell 6.4%, 9.1% and 9.5% year-over-year on October 23, 24 and 25, respectively, according to a Gordon Haskett note, per Reuters.  

“An outbreak in 2015 for Chipotle led to five quarters of comparable sales declines,” notes Reuters.