I attended a huge blog conference in NYC last week and was thrilled to be invited to a breakfast sponsored by McDonald’s. We are big fans of the franchise in this house. And I have written several articles about them already, the most recent can be found here.
McDonald’s is the largest fast food chain in the world. They didn’t get that way by not listening to their customers. And that is what our breakfast discussion was about.
Jan Fields, President of McDonald’s, led the discussion. Wow. A woman who started out at a local McDonald’s and worked her away up from behind the counter, all the way to the top. Her story was inspiring. She never gave up, even though, when she started, she had practically no role models as a business woman. You know I had to take a picture with her!
Ms. Fields and her staff wanted to hear what we had to say about her restaurants. This was their listening tour, and they picked a very vocal group of people. I have already written about the inclusion of apples in every happy meal and the shrinking of the fries order. McDonald’s is making an effort to guide their menu to healthier options for their customers. It all boils down to choices, my spouse goes wild when he has McDonald’s, he can sit and eat 4 sandwiches and 2 orders of fries. I have written about being on a diet and have twice been to McDonald’s and made the salad my choice of meal. The chicken is not fried, and the dressing is from Newman’s Own, a well known high quality company. When I order for my son I guide him through his choices: he is a growing boy and if he wants something fried, he gets Chicken McNuggets instead of fries. He outgrew the Happy Meal size portions a few years back!
I was impressed by Ms. Fields’ straight talk, if there was a suggestion, or a question about an item that was no longer on the menu, she was very frank and said it was not working. I appreciated her candor. And she did get a lot of good ideas from the crowd, we shall see what happens in the next few months!
And then came the party! McDonald’s has sponsored a party at Blogher for years now, and it is called CheeseburgHer! What a riot! Traditions at this party clearly started from the ground up, there was a mile long table of arts and crafts, so you could decorate McDonald’s bags which were then used as hats by the mostly female crowd. What a hoot! And of course all the McDonald’s hamburgers and cheeseburgers you could eat. Now that’s a party!
But wait! There were also bins filled with the current Happy Meal toys, the new SpongeBob collection! I have written about how I have bought thousands of these great toys on ebay over the years, and even gone into the stores to buy the toys without the food, for my collection- at this party I managed to pick up the entire new series, I was thrilled!
In conclusion, McDonald’s listens to it’s customers. That, the tasty food, and the choices that cover a huge caloric range, are why they are the leader in their industry and will remain so.
For more information check out McDonald’s.com, especially the list of food choices under 400 calories.
You can also join them on Facebook and Twitter.
Disclosure: I attended sponsored events and was under no obligation to write about them. I’m just a fan and wanted to share a little bit of their success story! All opinions are 100% my own and honest.
nothing beats their fries