McDonald’s Premium Coffee Boosts Sales

April 13, 2006

Comments

McDonald’s shift to better coffee is apparently paying dividends:

Premium coffee may perk up monthly sales at McDonald’s Corp. The fast-food franchise introduced a higher-grade of coffee last month and stock analyst Mark Kalinowski of The Buckingham Research Group thinks it will help jolt March sales, to be reported Thursday. He more than doubled his forecast for March sales in a recent report.

Most Wall Street analysts are looking for growth of 2% to 3% at restaurants open for at least 13 months. Mr. Kalinowski revised his forecast for U.S. sales growth to 5.6% from 2% after conducting a survey of McDonald’s franchisees.

Of course, if someone spills a cup of it on their laps, the profits will disappear. I understand it can be quite hot.

via Steven Taylor

2 responses to “McDonald’s Premium Coffee Boosts Sales”

Richard Gardner

April 14, 2006 at 1:09 am

Of all the frivolous lawsuits out there, the McDonalds lawsuit for too hot coffee is one I feel that when you look at the facts, it makes you wonder what was McDonalds doing. While I don’t eat breakfast at McD’s often, I will always also get some ice because the coffee is scalding. It is not hot, it is scalding. If I take off the lid, by the time I am finished with my breakfast, I still can’t drink it, even if I have stirred it many times. We may laugh at the old lawsuit, but it had some basis. Seriously, I stopped ordering coffee at McD’s because I knew it would be wasted. I don’t understand their marketing decision to make scalding coffee.
James Joyner

April 14, 2006 at 7:32 am

Richard,

I tend to agree. Indeed, I purposefully linked the ‘Lectric Law Library summary of the case because it does a good job of explaining the background–and the fact that damages were substantially reduced later in the process.

My understanding was that most people who got their coffee at the drive through didn’t actually drink it until later and then bitched that it was too cold.

The Burger King on my base in Germany also served ridiculously hot coffee–and they didn’t even have a drive through. It was so hot that you had to put ice in if you wanted to add cream, otherwise it would instantly curdle. No, I’m not exaggerating. And I burned my tongue once. Rather than suing BK, I just started adding ice or waiting for it to cool down.