Name: Watch a McDonald’s Progress Report From CEO Steve Easterbrook
Uploaded: 2016-08-17
Duration: 4 min 3 s
Description: The fast food giant is No. 25 on Fortune’s Change the World List.

It was a tough quarter for the restaurant industry. What in your view is going on? What happened? I think there's a lot at play at the moment. First of all the industry anyway is very competitive. There's a lot of businesses are working hard for their top of their game so therefore it's always gonna be a market share fight. But then you've got to think about the consumer. And the consumer's going through a period around the world of uncertainty Goes geopolitical uncertainty, economic uncertainty, and that makes them a little nervous as well. So and as a number of dynamics are play, ultimately at the end of the day, if we can deliver a better experience day and day in our restaurants, we're confident we can win that market share fight. So. So, what is the key part of that strategy, in your view? What are some of the main elements that you need to do to keep share, and gain share? Well, ultimately, the bread and butter of McDonald's is delivering great service, great quality food and affordable prices, day in and day out. And that consistency is really, really important to our customers. So, Fundamentally we got to keep working to make the everyday experience more consistent, more enjoyable, more fun. But then as we layout other meaningful moves on top, there is fun in engaging in promotional activities or investments such as we're making i around the proneness well food. We know all of those communicate the brand direction we're heading in and customers do respond And visit more often and we do attract new customers at the same time. Have you seen that, are you attracting new customers? We are attracting new customers and our existing customers are giving us credit by returning more often as well. So, that gives us the positive reinforcement to continue on this journey. Right. So if we act on the customers agenda and customers respond to that We believe that's a strong equation for our business. You took on the CEO job last year, how have you tweaked or changed your turnaround plan since you implemented it last year? Well we always make minor adjustments along the way, but largely what we set out to achieve, this was the second quarter of 2015. We have stuck to, it was a fairly straightforward turn around. Structure that we devise. But first, the pivotal piece was to get the business back to operating growth. And we have now delivered four quarters of growth across all four operating segments across the world. And before that, You'd had two- We'd had a period of decline, so the business was in a gentle decline, but that's unsatisfactory to us and to our owner operators, and clearly doesn't work for supplies either. So we knew we had to demonstrate that we could grow our organic business. But alongside that we wanted to create brand excitement, and also take certain initiatives to unlock financial value. And we've really maintained a laser light focus on those three pillars of the turnaround plan, whilst at the same time, we've been developing a longer term growth strategy as well. So where would you say you are in the turnaround? What we're going through, I would describe it as three phases. The initial phase is like a revitalization, get a business into growth. And a second phase is strength and then ultimately you want to get back to being seen as a leadership business. I think we're on that delicate stage where we're transitioning, revitalization stage into strengthen. So we want to end 2016 in a strong position and drive the business growth on the customer's agenda through 2017 and beyond. What is the most visible change that you've made since becoming CEO? That's a good question. I think the ongoing reinvestment we have in our restaurants around the world is significant. So we're introducing technology to help smooth the customer experience, with things such as [ INAUDIBLE ] kiosks We're unlocking the opportunity that technology offers us to just smooth the overall experience that customers have. Whether it's in the drive through or in the restaurant. So those are the most visible changes to customers, but also the less visible ones still mean a lot, such as when you show you're investing in the quality of the ingredients, and in the recipes of your food. Customers response may not be visible, but the signals it sends, the journey you're on is very, very powerful. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The fast food giant is No. 25 on Fortune’s Change the World List.