MCD is losing to fast food competition.

McDonald’s (MCD) saw its monthly global sales post their worst decline in more than a decade, as the iconic hamburger chain continues to struggle in key markets. (http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2014/09/09/mcdonald-logs-august-sales-slump-warns-china-woes/)

                 http://news.mcdonalds.com/default.aspx

            The fast food giant could improve the lure of the golden arches by taking quite a few different approaches.  Product improvement is a great place to begin.   McDonald’s has been changing their products for a long time, though.  How many times have you noticed when the McRib wasn’t on the menu anymore?  Did you know the McChicken wasn’t always on the Dollar Menu?  These methods are part of their corporate product improvement processes toward determining what the fast food consumer needs. 

MCD methods toward excellence concentrate on the critical success of the quality of the product orchestrated via ergonomics, performance metrics, exterior arrangements, pricing, brainstorming to build mind maps on the product improvement ideas, product testing to approve its quality/ usability in different conditions, and conceptualizing changes/improvements in product design.

When you are dreaming of lunch for today, you look for the closest place that offers a great value.  Apps are available to search for great deals.  Apps will also find you the closest restaurants. 

September 09, 2014: MCD announced it will accept Apple Pay in all of its U.S. restaurants following today’s launch of the mobile payments service, making food and beverage purchases fast and easy for customers using iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch. The combination of Apple Pay and McDonald’s investments in NFC (near-field communication) enabled payment scanners will significantly simplify how customers pay for their food and beverage purchases at McDonald’s (http://news.mcdonalds.com/Corporate/news-stories/McDonald’s-Announces-New-Collaboration-with-Apple)   

Fast food should always be convenient; “…simplify the customer experience…”, said Steve Easterbrook, senior executive vice president and global chief brand officer of McDonald’s.     You can search: “What customers really want.”  Customers want convenience.  Convenience is defined as the state of being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty.  Cellular phones are moving our era into a unified slide towards unimaginable mobility.  This is a great angle.

Personally, McDonalds’ customer service has failed.  The term fast food applies, but only if you can get your order right.  If the burger you ordered comes out like the drive thru attendant wasn’t paying any attention to what you said, then the meaning of MCD fast food turns into a headache.

 

Improving customer service could make a world of difference.   We know what good customer service means: assistance provided to people, utilizing the product/ services, with promptness, good manners, professionalism, and accuracy.  Customer service with accuracy is the most important. MCD employees could smile all day long, but if the orders are wrong, what was the point?  Some McDonalds’ employees have gone to the point of making it their goal to mess up certain customers orders, and then treat them rudely.  The evidence is there. 

McDonald’s is a nice fast food restaurant that kids and adults have enjoyed for years.  It would be a mistake to let it get taken over by employees that don’t care about excellent business.

Scientifically making McDonald’s French fries Healthy.

Digestion of food and the transit of the resultant substances to and through the wall of the digestive tract have a significant effect on the rate and efficiency of their absorption.

There is a significant influence of viscogenic agents and of the components of the mucus layer on flow, mixing and mass transfer within and from the lumen.

Digestion subcategories are fragmentation, solution, enzymatic breakdown and mass transfer, all of which include characteristic time constants or rate kinetics.

"Carbohydrates, mostly glycogen, are present in animal tissues. Carbohydrates include a broad range of substances other than starch and simple sugars, notably gums and celluloses (Roger G. Lentle)."

Mcdonald’s French fry ingredients:French Fries:
Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.

Starch granules are digested relatively slowly over a period of hours, the morphological sequence of breakdown varying with the species of plants from which the granules originate.

Amylase accesses the pores of the granule surface.

A broad range of carbohydrates, including resistant starches, non- starch polysaccharides, oligosaccharides and mucins, reach the large intestine were they undergo microbial fermentation that produces an array of short chain fatty acids. Only 10% of the energy requirement for humans is derived from these SCFAs.

The future results of digestion experiments will include controlled, developed processes that customize the physical characteristics of starch granules tailoring the rate of liberation and absorption to be compatible with the physiological dynamics of the consumer.

Roger G. Lentle, Patrick W. M. Janssen. The Physical Processes of Digestion. Science Chemistry General: SPRINGER, 2011, illustrated.