McDonald's turns 'progressive': too little, too late?

YOU could almost feel sorry for McDonald's. That's an odd sentiment when you consider that the company's revenues in 2014 were US$27.4 billion and its stock price makes it worth something like US$92 billion. It's among the world's most valuable brands and has three times the US market share of Subway, its nearest competitor.

Enviable. Yet for years its new products, business ventures, even social media attempts, have gone wrong: It sold a 90 per cent share in Chipotle, now one of its strongest competitors; it introduced products like chicken wings, which went nowhere; it created a Twitter hashtag, #McDStories, that turned into a bashing event. And it has spectacularly failed to attract or even hold on to millennial customers, who've fled in droves.

Meanwhile, it's the most visible target of an alliance of workers fighting for US$15 an hour (most McDonald's workers make slightly more than the federal minimum wage, US$7.25, but it varies by state), and its food is seen as anything but sustainable, fresh or healthy. A result has been a decline that includes a whopping 15 per cent drop in its US operating income in the last quarter of 2014.