It was 11:30 PM. Just finished watching Finding Nemo with my little 8 year-old cousin sister.”Can we go to McDonald’s? I’m hungry.”
“Almost midnight. McD is already closed. Why not I get you glass of milk and biscuit?”
“How come you so out dated? McD opens 24 hours a day.”
What, 24 hours a day?
Yeah, what my cousin sister said is true. It is true that McDonald’s is offering its fast food all day long nowadays in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. Not only it is earning more with its breakfast meal, now it goes into supper market too. Before Mac Tonight was introduced here, it has been around in America since year 1986.
Based on what I found from the Net, when McDonald’s launched its first drive-through in the USA in 1955, McDonald’s was a two-meal restaurant, opening just before lunch and closing not long after dinner. After the introduction of McMuffin in 1975, the company introduced the first fast-food breakfast. Now, more than 40% of its stores in the U.S are operating non-stop. So do those in Malaysia and Singapore and the rest of the world now.
Though I agree fast food is not healthy, I have to respect for McDonald’s business strategies. The all-hours approach works well when the company has reached a saturation point when comes to locations. Instead of building more outlets, McDonald’s is increasing its sales by squeezing more from the ones it has.
Despite the competition from other fast food companies like Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut, McDonald is still the leader. After posting its first-ever quarterly loss in 2002, it has logged 45 consecutive months of sales increase.
According to the McDonald’s CEO James Skinner, “We’ve learned. We’ve evolved. We believe we’ve cracked the code.”
Code, what code was he talking about?
Not the Da Vinci Code. It is just a simple secret, actually. People like to eat all day long. Don’t you think so?
By the way, have you ever noticed its Mac Tonight advertisement cleverly being aired after 11 PM on television?
Talking about McDonald’s, it got into another headline by sponsoring students’ report card in one of the schools in US – Check out the article of Will You Allow McDonald’s to Advertise on Kids’ Report Card