The increase of outlets per year has remained at 5% for the last two decades despite a falling increase in sales. By expanding quickly into international markets, McDonald's was able to arrive before competition and secure a plan for future growth opportunities.
Even though McDonald's has been extremely successful, there are still some weaknesses that exist within the company. Those weaknesses include past product and promotion concepts, performance of international divisions, and it's U.S. expansion strategy.
For McDonald's, the creation and implementation of new products costs millions of dollars. These millions of dollars have been spent on products such as the Arch Deluxe and McPizza (US Products), which no longer exist. Along with failed products is the constant change of promotions and slogans. Another weakness for McDonald's has been with expansion in the United States. In the early 90's they were expanding into airports, malls, and hospitals. This was in an effort to move from cities and suburbs that were already saturated. These new ventures proved to be unsuccessful and many have closed due to poor profitability (Leonhardt, 1998). .
McDonald's strength of providing for children can also be seen as a weakness. The company is not very flexible in the way of promoting and providing for adults, especially with customers growing need for health food in recent years. .
The two greatest opportunities for McDonald's are their expansion into other brands and international markets. First the expansion into markets like Mexican entries (Chipotle), pizza delivery (Donatos Pizza), and Home-style meals (Boston Market) allow them access to the fastest growing restaurant segments. This will allow them to have a better product selection and provide future domestic growth. Internationally, McDonald's has the opportunity of penetrating further markets before competition. Their plan is to add about five restaurants each day as new restaurants are posting strong initial results and returns.