Burger King on a Roll?

Leading the industry in same-store sales - AOL

Maze on Potential Wendy's Sale

"It’s not entirely clear, however, that going private can help a company engineer a turnaround. In fact, in our experience, companies tend to languish just as much outside the public limelight." - Jonathan Maze

After months of questions about whether Wendy’s former chairman would buy the company

Poultry in Motion

 Is this analyst onto something?

McDonald's bet on chicken hits a snag with franchisees - Birds too big? - Marketwatch

Let's Get Political

This website doesn't get too political, since we assume most who visit know to vote in the interests of the USA and sound economics.

But then there's the question: will you go out and vote?

Many voters skip the mid-term elections, but this year many of the candidates on the left are lunatics and their platforms border on communism. America needs your vote!

Kim Strassel is one of the better minds at The Wall Street Journal, and her recent article in Hillsdale's "Imprimis" sums up the issue nicely. It's about an eight-minute read.

(DSA stands for Democratic Socialists of America - this is the hidden Democrat party platform for 2026 and will be again in 2028)

Kim writes:

"What about the claim to be democratic? The DSA platform explains that the glorious uprising will require a few tweaks to the U.S. democratic system. First up is abolishing the Electoral College and the Senate. Second the DSA would “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to” one supreme people’s (soviet?) congress. That congress would be dominated by blue states under strict proportional representation—a form of representation, seen in parts of Europe, that is foreign to America’s constitutional tradition. No more checks and balances. No more federalism. No more republic."

The entire Imprimis article is HERE

Big Wendy's Franchisee Could Close 60 Stores

This kind of thing should begin to help McDonald's same-store sales

Sacrificing the Future for Corporate Growth

QSR corporate heads are in a terrible bind. They get paid the big bucks to produce growth for shareholders. Yet, by their own admission, QSR markets are oversaturated, and QSR isn't a growth industry.

That begs the question: How hard will McDonald's management push Owner/Operators to produce growth for the "system"? How much discounting? How much debt? How much cannibalization by new locations?

Fast-food execs have low expectations - Maze

“Traffic has been flat for several years now,” Ian Borden, McDonald’s CFO, said in an interview following the company’s recent Investor Day presentation. “I think that’s partly because more capacity is being added in terms of new units than incremental customer demand, and I don’t think that’s going to change in the near-term.” 

KFC to Dump Pepsi for Coke

Remember when Pepsi owned KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut?

In The Future...

If a customer gets frustrated and wants to leave the drive-thru line, Elon Musk shows us how it will work.

Public Companies Putting Franchisee Profits Last

Domino's discounting binge pressuring franchisee profits - RestBus

Chains Thinking Twice About AI in Drive-Thru

MCD Watchers (Investors, Analysts, Reporters) seem to think that the only path to a faster drive-thru is at the speaker. They don't realize how much goes into fast service, far beyond the ordering process.

Burger King shifts gears on AI in Drive-Thru - RestBus

Chick-fil-A takes a stand against drive-thru AI trend - MSN

Yahoo's Business Editor has Comments

Brian Sozzi from Yahoo has a wall of shame

McDonald's Franchisees Push Back

McDonald's franchisees push back on 800K remodeling costs - Bloomberg

Another Fine Mess Management Has Gotten McDonald's Into

This is what you get when you have a CEO who thinks he can ignore decades of legal interpretation and generations of McDonald's policy.

McDonald's hit with class action alleging AI-powered menu price-fixing - Reuters

This Kind of Thing is Almost Universal in Franchising

Subway vendors caught stealing from franchisees

Maze on "X"

Jonathan Maze

@jonathanmaze

I think if I'm a McDonald's franchisee this week I'm probably really angry about this AI pricing stuff, and let me explain. McDonald's franchisees have for decades controlled their pricing, which is why the prices vary from one store to the next. (Our three closest McDonald's all price their Big Macs differently, for instance.) This is an important part of the franchise business. As local owners, they're supposed to have that control, because their costs vary and they need to generate a profit. The company provides a pricing recommendation tool, which was built by Deloitte and uses machine learning, and probably AI, to make those recommendations. Those recommendations are based on a variety of factors, and the use of AI to make them would be completely understandable because pricing is difficult business. Yet operators don't have to follow it, and sometimes don't. In recent years, as its traffic has declined, McDonald's has exerted some real pressure on operators to go along with national value offers. McDonald's has to do this because, again, franchisees control the pricing. This came up recently, when Chris Kempczinski blamed "inconsistent execution" for part of the failure of the $3 and Under Menu during the company's last earnings call, when he noted that 60% to 65% of operators followed the recommended prices. Earlier this year McDonald's added a new value standard to its franchise rules. So all the pressure on operators has been on value. As the AI story has played out on social media, it has played like AI is doing the pricing. And consumers are worried that AI pricing will mean dynamic pricing, much like we see in other industries. That is a legitimate concern. And many consumers are still very frustrated by fast-food prices, and McDonald's is at the epicenter of that frustration. But unless all my sources are flat-out lying to me, AI does not price McDonald's Big Macs or its other items. The company does not do dynamic pricing. And it doesn't price based on the customer. Yet the uproar is likely to intensify the anger not just at McDonald's, but at other fast-food chains, where franchisees have seen profits take a hit while bankruptcies are soaring.

McDonald's on the Price Fixing Defensive

McDonald's denies AI or Mc/HQ sets Big Mac prices - People