Approximately 500 McDonald's restaurants will be closed in 2016. From the 500 locations from all over the world that are planned to be shut down, a lot of them are said to be focused in the U.S. McDonald's starts to select the good-performing restaurant chains, and leave the weak-performing restaurant chains.
Mentioned in The Street, Becca Hary, McDonald's spokeswoman refused to give any statements of how many U.S. restaurants exactly will be closed this year. She said via email, "It's important to note that while we will have a net reduction in restaurants [in the U.S.], the impact is minimal in comparison to the 14,000 restaurants we operate across the U.S."
She continued, "We consistently review our restaurant portfolio and make strategic decisions to better position our business for the future."
McDonald's has informed that last year, the company opened 115 restaurants in the U.S., and shut down the other 206. While in Japan, there is a 137 reduction in the total numbers of 2,956 McDonald's restaurants from the previous year. In global, the company finished 2015 with 36,525 restaurants, up around 267 from 2014.
According to the Mail Online, the company is evaluating the prospect of certain restaurant locations, and thinking about selling properties to make the most of more potential assets. These shutting downs may be caused by the decreasing billion-dollar global profits from year to year.
The news has been released just days after it withdrew its branches from Middle Eastern and three Latin American countries. There are also 175 restaurants are being closed in ten other countries. Some branches may close, but some other new branches will be opened. The spokeswoman has called it as "keeping the balance of growth."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post stated, "Each time McDonald's has announced how much money it's making, the company has been forced to share an embarrassing truth: Americans are eating less and less of its hamburgers, chicken nuggets, and French fries."
Since March, McDonald's had not shared its monthly performance report due to the downturn in its profit. Until on Monday, McDonald's announced 5.7 percent sales increase during the last three months of the year 2015. This is the highest return since four years ago.
McDonald's has been successful in having the all-day breakfast menu. The Egg McMuffin is undeniably the most famous sandwich for breakfast in the world. The sandwich, which was first introduced in 1970s, still becomes number 1 customer favorite. In the U.S., 2 billion eggs or nearly 5 percent of the total eggs produced each year are used to fulfill the demand of the Egg McMuffin.
Darren Tristano, the president of Technomic, a food industry market research firm, said, "It's one of the oldest items they've had on their menu, and it's still one of the most popular. Selling it all day long was a no-brainer."
Eventhough there have been good earnings in the last three months of 2015, it does not always determine the future sales. The actual test will go through the rest of 2016 and ahead. It will show whether the shutting down of the 500 branches can help McDonald's obtain more income or not.
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