McDonalds • During the COVID-19 pandemic, McDonald's emerged as the winner in fast casual through digital innovations along their core competencies for their core consumers. • Though the impact of COVID-19 has been felt across the business community, the fast-casual restaurant industry has faced especially high adversity in the face of rapidly changing consumer behavior caused by the pandemic. • McDonald’s believed to be their key comparative advantages with their core customers — what McDonald’s calls the “three D’s”: digital, drivethru, and delivery. How did they manage to adapt through the pandemic ? • digital innovations paid off tremendously for McDonald’s drive-thru channel such as Mobile Order and Pay, and self-order kiosks. • These innovations enabled McDonald’s to cut 30 seconds from its drive-thru times on average and move “300 million additional cars” through McDonald’s drive-thrus during the pandemic • In addition to drive-thru, enabling delivery perhaps not surprisingly became a significant focus for McDonald’s to provide customers with additional safe channels to order food. The result — delivery sales have more than tripled • By focusing innovation on the company’s comparative advantage, the three D’s, McDonald’s was able to create a faster, easier, and better customer experience — even in the face of tremendous change.
