Many years ago, when I worked at a local McDonald’s as a teenager, a car being chased by police officers crashed in front of the restaurant, prompting the manager at the time to demand that none of us talk to the press, as if we knew anything. McDonald’s, he said, did not want the press.
We’ve been thinking of this lately, particularly in the aftermath of the death of United Healthcare’s CEO. The alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, was caught by police at one of the fast-food chain’s locations in Altoona, Pennsylvania, thanks in part to help from a McDonald’s employee.
The result caught McDonald’s in the rather unfeeling reaction of social media users to the death of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. The restaurant was flooded for a time with negative reviews, which Google has apparently removed.
All of which adds to what has been a strange year for the Chicago-based burger giant.
Early in the year, the company was the recipient of a social media furor over Big Mac meals that cost $18 at a Connecticut rest stop. That was followed up with alleged studies showing that prices there had “doubled” since before the pandemic, prompting the company to release—for probably the first time ever—average prices for a bunch of menu items.
That also prompted the chain to explore a value offer, which became a $5 Meal Deal, and which prompted much of the fast-food sector to join in.
Meanwhile, the company debuted a second concept for the first time in about forever, the drink concept CosMc's, which it is currently expanding in Texas.
CosMc's first location generated some awful long lines in its first days. | Photo by Linda Rasmussen.
Then there was Donald Trump’s visit to one such McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, which closed its doors for a time so the former and future president could serve fries to hand-selected customers for a publicity stunt.
More importantly, there was the E. coli incident in October, which had largely wiped out what had started to be a sales recovery. That incident, caused by fresh onions sourced from a Taylor Farms facility in Colorado Springs, was the first major outbreak at McDonald’s in decades.
That incident turned what had been positive sales and traffic into negative sales and traffic. It prompted the company to invest $100 million, including $35 million for marketing and the rest to help franchisees whose sales were hurt the most.
It also likely prompted McDonald’s to inform the world that it would bring back Snack Wraps some time next year.
Indeed, we noted with some interest McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger’s appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America, where he spent much of an interview talking about the company’s E. coli response, only to end it by revealing the Snack Wrap news.
The result frustrated franchisees, who’ve been pushing for a return of the product themselves but who felt that it was too much of a preview of the chain’s menu news—enabling competitors to step in and get out ahead of it. And indeed, Burger King pretty quickly reminded customers that it had wraps of its own right away.
Still, the move did in fact do what McDonald’s likely wanted: To get people talking about something other than E. coli.
McDonald’s was able to change the narrative around the company with the offer of its meal deal, which worked to get the media to talk about something other than its high prices. The Snack Wrap reveal did something similar, changing the narrative so people can focus on something else.
Social media narratives are having a bigger impact on restaurant sales than many people truly realize. If there is a lesson from 2024, in fact, it’s that big restaurant chains need to pay close attention to how people view them on social channels.
That view helped fuel Chili’s 14%-plus same-store sales. They helped to damage Starbucks enough that it upended its management. It drove much of consumer reaction to fast-food prices and largely prompted the value war.
It remains to be seen what, if any, impact there could be on McDonald’s from the incident in Altoona. In any event, after this year, we can certainly see why our old manager didn’t want any publicity. And there was no social media back then.