When sales are low, the fix is a cinch. Just hand out socks with the face of the Grinch.
McDonald’s recorded its best quarterly U.S. same-store sales in more than two years as the company’s marketing promotions, including the return of Monopoly in October and The Grinch Meal in December, helped drive traffic to the chain’s restaurants.
Same-store sales in the U.S. rose 6.8%, the company said on Wednesday. Globally, same-store sales rose 5.7%.
The sales results last quarter represented the third straight domestic quarterly increase for the chain, which had been dealing with consumers frustrated over rising menu prices and a generally weak economic environment—particularly for lower-income consumers.
In addition to its marketing promotions, the company cited its value leadership in driving the quarterly results.
McDonald’s has been particularly aggressive in pushing lower prices, with lower-priced Extra Value Meals and a McValue Menu featuring a variety of digital and national offers.
The company said that those value efforts worked to bring traffic into the chain’s restaurants, including lower-income consumers that had been abandoning the chain in recent years.
“As I’ve said before, and I will say again, McDonald’s is not going to get beat on value and affordability,” CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts on Wednesday. “It’s in our DNA, and we will remain agile to respond to a dynamic competitive landscape.”
The Grinch Meal proved remarkably popular in December. The company ran out of socks given away with the meal within a week. It sold so well that, for a week, McDonald's was the biggest seller of socks in the world, Kempczinski told analysts on Wednesday.
Company executives said on Wednesday that the meal's introduction in December led to the highest sales day in the company's history. McDonald's sold more of the Grinch Meal than the otherwise successful Minecraft Movie Menu meal in the spring and its Collector's Cups in 2024 combined.
Numerous data points had suggested McDonald’s ended 2025 on a strong note. Foot traffic data firm Placer.ai had suggested strong transaction counts in the last three months of the year.
The survey firm Numerator listed three McDonald’s menu items among its 10 best new items and limited-time offers of the year, including the top two in McCrispy Strips and the Snack Wrap. No. 10 was the S’mores McFlurry.
Easier comparisons helped, too. The company was comparing itself from a particularly tough period a year ago when it was dealing with the fallout from an E. coli incident in Colorado.
Yet McDonald’s same-store sales rose 5.4% on a two-year stacked basis, which can factor out such one-time events. That was the highest in more than a year and an acceleration from the 2.7% increase the previous quarter.
Global system sales at McDonald’s increased 7% in 2025 to $139 billion. The chain also generated $37 billion in system sales last year from its loyalty program members, which numbered 210 million as of the end of the year.
Revenues increased 10% last quarter to more than $7 billion. Net income increased 7% to $2.2 billion, or $3.03 per share. Excluding one-time charges, earnings-per share was $3.12, up 10%. The numbers beat Wall Street expectations.
Executives did say that they expect same-store sales to slow down in the first quarter this year, compared with the fourth quarter, because the last period was so strong but also due to poor weather that likely slowed same-store sales by 100 basis points.
UPDATE: This story has been updated to add information from the company's earnings call Wednesday.
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