McDonald’s keeps trying to reimagine itself to keep up with changing consumer lifestyles, food preferences, pocketbooks, dismal revenue performance, disenfranchised franchisees and employees striking over low pay.
As part of its turnaround plan, McDonald’s is testing McDelivery, a food delivery service for customers in 88 New York locations. Customers can choose from the full menu. Interestingly, McDonald’s has offered McDelivery in dozens of countries including China and Egypt, but not in the U.S. where it all started.
“Our customers continue to tell us that they want their favorites from McDonald’s delivered right to their doorsteps,” Julia Vander Ploeg, vice president of McDonald’s USA Digital, said in a release. “We’ve listened to their feedback and are excited to launch this initiative. We look forward to learning from this test and continuing to innovate as we offer our customers everyday conveniences and new ways to experience our brand.”
The McDelivery website is in beta test, but will allow customers to use a virtual “tray” to add various menu items to it before placing their orders at anytime 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
Other initiatives under the turnaround plan call for McDonald’s to reduce layers of management and pay more attention to what its customers are saying about the brand. It also announced that it would use only chickens that are largely free of antibiotics used to treat humans. A huge shift that is likely to attract a new breed of customer. This week, Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s new CEO as of March 1, used a 23-minute video to talk about the plans.