McDonalds is going to die globally

http://fortune.com/2015/04/22/mcdonalds-restaurants-closing/



McDonald’s is closing hundreds of stores this year

by Phil Wahba

@FortuneMagazine

April 22, 2015, 4:16 PM EDT

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McDonald’s MCD shuttered 350 poorly performing stores in Japan, the United States, and China the first three months of 2015 as part of its plan to boost its sagging profits.

Those previously unannounced closings, disclosed on a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday, are on top of the 350 shutterings the world’s largest restaurant chain had already targeted for the year. While those 700 store closings this year represent a fraction of the 32,500 or so restaurants worldwide, they show how aggressive McDonald’s is getting in pruning poorly attended locations that are dragging down its results.

Earlier on Wednesday, McDonald’s had reported an 11% decrease in revenue and a 30% drop in profit for the first three months of year, a continuation of its troubles in the last two years as it has struggled to compete with new U.S. competitors, a tough economy in Europe and a food safety scare in Asia.

McDonald’s CFO Kevin Ozan told analysts that the shuttered stores in China, where comparable sales fell 4.8% in the first quarter, had been underperforming for years. In Japan, where McDonald’s is still reeling from the food safety scare last summer, the stores closed stores were “heavy loss maker restaurants.” As for the U.S., comparable sales were down 2.3%, one of their biggest drop in years as chains like Chipotle ate into sales.

On May 4, the company will start detailing its turnaround strategy.

In the last few months, it has made a few moves that telegraph where it is heading, though it is pretty clear how the big the challenge will be for the Golden Arches.

For instance, earlier in April the company announced it is testing out a larger, pricier, third-of-a-pound burger for $5, two years after dropping the similar Angus burger line because they were too pricey for McDonald’s diners. Despite that earlier failure, new CEO Steve Easterbrook expressed confidence his customers would go for premium burgers.

“I often describe McDonald’s as possibly the most democratic — with a small ‘d’ — brand in the world,” he said. “And what customers love the world over, and none more so than here in the U.S., is how they can buy into aspirational quality products, but at a McDonald’s price.”

But he faces an uphill battle in winning over the millions of burger-eaters in the U.S. that have a dim view of McDonald’s offerings: Nation’s Restaurant News published a survey this month rating 111 limited-service chains on 10 attributes including food quality, and McDonald’s was ranked No. 110, ahead only of Chuck E. Cheese. In-N-Out Burger topped the list.

And he also has to get the thousands of franchisees, who own 80% of McDonald’s locations, on board as he works to transform the company, even as many are still smarting from his decision to raise wages at company-owned U.S. r
McDonald’s is closing hundreds of stores this year

by Phil Wahba

@FortuneMagazine

Nothing to do with dying, they did not estimate the demand in the first place and opened too many stores, after the closures and cost cutting, they may be stronger than ever.

In SG I can see Challenger and Pet Lovers Centre to follow suit soon.

if they start selling curry puffs they may make a cumback.

eatshitndie said:

if they start selling curry puffs they may make a cumback.

Click to expand...

With an Indian being the next presidential candidate in the US, you never know, Mcds may sell samosa, and curry puffs.

The Expensive Consequences of Cheap Food: An Interview with Raj Patel

IN INTERVIEWS / BY ADMIN / ON AUGUST 15, 2014 AT 10:03 AM /

By Milenko Srećković​

Raj Patel is the author of the bestseller “Stuffed and Starved – The Hidden Battle for the World Food System” and the most recent book “The Value of Nothing” – named after famous Oscar Wilde’s aphorism ‘Nowadays, people know price of everything and the value of nothing’. In his book he criticizes a dominant attitude towards food as ordinary market commodity and speaks about alternative food models, neglected or suppressed in modern society.

Patel is citizen of USA, born in Great Britain, of Kenyan and Fijian origin. He cooperates with South African Landless People Movement. During his academic training he worked in the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, but very soon became a harsh critic of these institutions and participated in organization of numerous protests against them. The most famous of those protests was the one in Seattle 1999, when about 40 thousand people raised their voice against adverse effects of globalization.

According to Patel, we do not live in democracy, because we do not decide on anything essential, but in a “complainocracy” – because only if we complain enough, we can hope at least for some minor change to occur. We spoke with him for Freedom Fight Info about problems manufactured by contemporary food system, and in what way food can be protected from the dictates of the market.

- You say that cheap food is a cheat food, that we value it because it’s cheap but that actually comes with a very high cost and that it doesn’t have a value. What is the cost and consequences of cheap food that we neglect and ignore? Do you think that reevaluating of the food value should be connected with some general human values that are undermined in current societies? How did the production and distribution of the food lose its connection with the general well-being of the society?

In ‘The Value of Nothing’, one of the examples that people seem the most surprised by is a finding from an Indian research group that a hamburger selling for $1 in the US ought to probably cost $200 if its environmental footprint were taken into account. If the beef in that burger was raised on land that used to be rainforest, then what’s lost is not only the wood from the trees in the forest, but the ecosystem services they provide. They sequester carbon, produce oxygen, provide a haven for the biodiversity that our pharmaceutical industry needs, cycle nutrients and water for the planet, etc. All of these can be imputed a dollar value which, as I say, was far higher than people had suspected. The $200 doesn’t even include the healthcare costs that come with consuming a diet of fast-food, or the cultural losses of rich cuisines being supplanted by McDonald’s.

Yet the $1 burger is hard to ignore, especially when – as here in the United States – cheap food and cheap fuel have been the unofficial bargains struck with the working class in exchange for low wages. With poverty a serious issue, it’s necessary for many people to focus on cheap food now, even if they’re cheated out of money through healthcare costs later on.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, though. In the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century, the move to encourage the drinking of sugary milky tea in England – high in calories, low in nutrients, needing colonialism to bring the sugar and tea to Britain – was a way to provide cheap calories for a working class that favoured more local, nutritious beverages, like beer. The production and distribution of food has, historically, had a complicated relationship with health. It’s important not to get too romantic about the past, when food production had an intrinsic connection of feudal structures of servitude. But if we’re able to see this connection in the past, then we must see it today – the modern diet has only a little to do with keeping workers alive, and much more with the conditions of production that are part of capitalist profit-making.

- In what way does current food distribution, dominated by trade and market, influence countries that are in development or underdeveloped countries? How do you see the role of the WTO?

A century ago, there were four major grain companies that ran international trade – Cargill, Continental, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus. Today, four countries have the lion’s share of international trade. Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus. These corporations wield a tremendous amount of power on the international markets. But they’re not the only ones. Increasingly, as you suggest, there are major players in the Global South. Thailand’s CP Chicken, for instance, is a $50bn dollar company, and one of the world’s largest poultry firms. China has just bought Smithfield, a US livestock titan. There is much more agricultural capitalism based in the Global South. And it also takes many forms. Traders like Glencore or the Noble Group, of whom few have heard, control large chunks of the global grain trade too. The rules for which these corporations lobbied at the WTO – and continue to demand in treaties like the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – undermine something far more than a country’s ability to produce food domestically. These agreements shape intellectual property, health, investment, government purchasing and standards-setting. I think that, especially in a time of climate change, we need to be thinking harder about public buffers against crop failure and climate-related disaster. But when – in every major food market – around six corporations control more than 50% of the market, it’s hard for public interests to stand up against private ones.

- You are not a supporter of ”green revolution”. What is wrong with that concept?

It sounds great, doesn’t it? The Green Revolution – a plan to feed the world by making it green, using hybrid seeds, fertilizer and irrigation to produce more than people ever imagined. But remember this: the Green Revolution got its name from a US official in 1968, who applauded it because it wasn’t like the ‘red’ revolution of the soviets, or the ‘white revolution of the shah of Iran’. The goal of the Green Revolution was to provide cheap food for people who live in cities, so that they wouldn’t become communist. It was social engineering, intended to stop people from organizing for social change. The Green Revolution came at a high price – it prevented the kind of land reform that would have benefitted millions of poor people around the world, and for which those people were clamouring. Instead, it has locked us into a system of agriculture dependent on cheap fossil fuels, and abundant water, which is increasingly irrelevant in the 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century. Yet today there are calls for a new Green Revolution from, among others, the Gates Foundation. If you’re curious about how the old Green Revolution is very much alive, and causing trouble, you might be interested in “The Long Green Revolution” tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2012.719224

- What are the consequences of current food production on the nature and on the natural resources such as land? Why are foreign companies interested to buy agricultural land in countries such as Serbia?

The current food system is far more ‘financialized’ than it used to be. Specifically, things that weren’t considered commodities – intellectual property in seeds – or things that couldn’t be easily bought and sold on international markets – land in Serbia, for instance – have found themselves increasingly for sale. With the creation of new opportunities for accumulation, investors have seen easy opportunities. Fertile land close to water and transport is comparatively cheap compared to similar land in population hotspots, or in oil states. Investment funds from Gulf States, China and, of course, the Global North, have taken a keen interest in buying land and natural resources to feed other parts of the world.

None of this, however, has happened without a fight. Throughout the world – from grassroots peasant struggles in the 1990s to United Nations agencies earlier this year, terms like ‘food sovereignty’ have started to matter. The idea of food sovereignty (more here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03066150903143079 ) is that people ought to have democratic control of their food system. What that entails is different in each context, but the ultimate idea is that our food systems need to be premised not on profit, but fundamental human equality.

https://indypendent.org/2009/11/19/ideology-hope-interview-raj-patel

The Center for Science and Environment in India tried a few years ago to figure out the true cost of a hamburger. Assuming that it was raised on pasture that was once rainforest, the ecological services provided by that rainforest, the loss of diversity, carbon sequestration, water cycling, fuel and tropical product sources, among many other things, the cost would come to $200. The U.S. food industry has huge hidden costs, from the agricultural run-off that causes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the cultural destruction wrought by the “Western” diet. There are also huge health costs associated with poor diet — in 2007, $174 billion was spent in the U.S. caring for people with diabetes — as well as the public funds that support the industrial food system.


Cheap food is “cheat food.” There are all kinds of costs that are externalized from the price we pay at the checkout. We pay those costs one way or another — but the food companies don’t. Merely having a system of free markets with accurate prices still doesn’t address the underlying issues of poverty and disenfranchisement.

See what I mean?

Brit industrialized revolution products are unsustainable. No life shelves including their stock markets. All full of hot air of unsustainable innovation right from the age of their cut and paste industrial revolution technologies.

Also when illegal means of raising monies for US and Brit drugging Chinese, 2000% opium profit, the end part will collapse as it was NOT in God's will to bless evil people.

Was Mcdonald funded by drug money linked to the drug dealers like Delano family or others?

2 opium wars with the West? Wasn't the 1st opium war enough to tell them to stop drugging Chinese? No? Then they came for new markets targeting SEA Straights Settlement Singapore and Borneo for more drug money?

British governor of Singapore drugging their non-white British Subjects mainly Chinese for drug money? Unbelievable?

Hello, who was the ringleader in Singapore supply opium, my grandmother smoked opium and why the British government permit opium trades openly in Singapore opening hundred of opium dens everywhere?

Wtf is this?

eatshitndie said:

if they start selling curry puffs they may make a cumback.

Click to expand...

Not in Sinkieland though, they will be persecuted by the govt mafia people who're bribed by Old Chang Kee.

xebay11 said:

With an Indian being the next presidential candidate in the US, you never know, Mcds may sell samosa, and curry puffs.

Click to expand...

with a black president in charge they fail to capitalize on black soul food or a barack burger, but perhaps they know he prefers five guys over their fifty mcnuggets. i would try a mcsamosa or mcpuff if they hire the minah on the street as their food consultant. :p

laksaboy said:

Not in Sinkieland though, they will be persecuted by the govt mafia people who're bribed by Old Chang Kee.

Click to expand...

if they pay their dues like toastbox outmuscles it's way over ya kun they may sell fried mcfishballs too. :p

dey junk fud peddlar ...

if dey dun die, man die ...

eatshitndie said:

if they start selling curry puffs they may make a cumback.

Click to expand...

datz a burger makes a curry puffy cumbag ... or a burger make a curry puffy scumbag ...

Moi bery much rather...de fucking jollypee shut down for goot...

Microsoft said:

Moi bery much rather...de fucking jollypee shut down for goot...

Click to expand...

You'll make a lot of the Pinays very sad if Jollibee shuts down. :(

Philippines has the world's only 3-course meal at McDonalds.

They will continue to thrive if they put the curry sauce on all their burgers.

Russian and Chinese governments already took actions to clamp down on American food businesses and brands. Scrutinized all the thing they can find, including sub-standard meat, employees exploitation etc. It is economic war also.

Fuck macdognalds piece of shit company

not many people realize that since US companies like MCDognold flood the world the salaries stagnant.

invest in their industrialized revolution technology cut jobs and stall salary.