'McDonald's Next', as the brand new McDonald's store in Hong Kong is called, houses a new concept designed to turn around the fast food chain's tired, old image. The golden arches flies high with happy customers in Hong Kong and elsewhere around the globe applauding McDonald's innovative changes, which include the 'Create Your Taste' salad bar and a new design style replete with glass-cased kitchen counter salad showcase, wireless charging stations on each table and very current interior art.
This new McDonald's that offers very switched-on salad bar choices as couscous, quinoa and asparagus, touch-screen kiosks to make the salad combination choices and table service is a far cry from the regular stores of the chain. Burgers served on cutting boards with very fresh ingredients and hot fries in wire baskets are leaps above the old plastic tray of greasy 'Super Size Me' meals.
Many ask if this is the new direction that all McDonald's stores will take. Whichever the case, this move of resilience from previous reputation issues has brought McDonald's straight into the map of cool. Sales estimates, given the very positive feedback, may see a rise from 700,000 in 2015 to a possible to 760,000 by 2022.
This is not an impossible estimation since in neighbouring Philippines, sales in the last quarter of 2015 saw a reported phenomenal 470% increase with help from a celebrity teen team-up called AlDub by TV personality Alden Richards and Dubsmash star Maine Mendoza (Yaya Dub) and the solid support from the Philippine AlDub nation for the #AldubKoTo campaign. Incidentally, the Alden-Yaya Dub (hence AlDub) tandem reached international recoginition through their Pabebe wave trend. The McDonald's sales figure is qualified by the VP for Marketing Communications Margot Torres of Philippine franchise holder Golden Arches Development Corporation as:
"Our growth is measured based on same store sales and transactions... If we use the period when we sold Minions (which was a good month) as a base index of 100 and compare the same store transactions growth figure with the period 3 weeks after we launched our chicken fillet a la king and the aldub campaign, the figure is 470 vs base index.
"This is a nationwide number."
Globally, McDonald's the third quarter of 2015 evidences a 4% increase in global comparable sales.
In the US, operation McPick 2 for $2 also hopes to make the same waves by competing price-wise while personalising choices. McDonald's USA chief marketing officer Deborah Wahl says: "Not everyone wants the same thing, so we are offering a new way to help our customers have a more personalized experience."
