$5 meals, $6 combos, and fewer visits: McDonald’s barrage of deals isn’t winning customers back

The $5 Sausage McMuffin meal didn't do the trick. Neither did the mix-and-match deal that let customers choose, say, the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets for $6.

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski has been trying to persuade customers squeezed by inflation or tempted away by competitors' burgers and chicken sandwiches to return to the Golden Arches. But so far, the company's barrage of new meal deals and aggressive marketing to promote them have come up short.

In each quarter this year, McDonald's U.S . growth has shrunk, and customer visits have reportedly dropped. Wall Street has taken notice: McDonald's shares are now down 32% from an all-time high in February.

What's worse, some of its efforts to repair those downward trends have backfired. Kempczinski conceded in August that too many new menu and deal launches had overwhelmed its restaurants and harmed service. The onslaught irked franchisees, a crucial constituency, just as McDonald's was asking them to spend $1 million per store on remodels and upgrades.

The CEO defended his plan this summer, arguing that the strategy was good, and only the execution was bad. But McDonald's paltry results of late suggest there is more to its malaise than just a few tactical errors. In its most recent quarter, McDonald's reported U.S. comparable sales growth of 0.8%, hardly a catastrophe but a continuation of its slowing growth and an underwhelming performance, especially compared with the 8.5% jump at resurgent rival Burger King.

"We must be the first choice for more customers more often," Kempczinski told analysts at McDonald's investor day at its Chicago headquarters in September. There, he fleshed out the restaurant chain's global business strategy, called "McDonald's > Next," which aims to serve better food, improve service, and make restaurants easier to run. But investors seem skeptical; for now they see more tarnish than gleam in the Golden Arches.

What's worried investors most about McDonald's financial performance, particularly in the U.S. where it generates 40% of revenue or $10 billion a year, is a drop in store visits. While McDonald's doesn't report traffic numbers, analytics firm Placer.ai estimates U.S. visits fell 4.5% in the first half of 2026. (A company spokesperson said McDonald's is "unable to corroborate or validate third-party data.")

McDonald's risks losing more customers if it has to raise prices to contend with beef inflation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that beef prices in August were 5.9% higher than a year earlier. Kempczinski said last month that beef costs had nearly doubled over the past five years in the company's biggest markets, an acute problem for McDonald's given its lower-income clientele. He's said price hikes are on the table, but the company lost customers after it raised prices during the COVID crisis, a lesson etched in his mind.