McDonald's "NEXT" Strategy: How a Giant Is Rebuilding Itself

On August 21, McDonald's CEO and Chairman Chris Kempczinski spoke with Harvard Business Review editor Adi Ignatius about the company's new global strategic plan, 'McDonald's > NEXT.' The conversation covered the strategy's four core pillars, the company's response to two major trends — AI and GLP-1 drugs — shifting consumer spending, and how the company scales innovation.

Kempczinski explained that the need for a new strategy stemmed from two forces converging at once: a fundamental shift in the external environment (inflation, changing eating habits, and the rise of AI) and the fact that the company itself has become 'a fundamentally different company' than it was six years ago. He backed that up with numbers: McDonald's now has 220 million digital loyalty members, giving it a direct line to customers, and delivery has grown into a $20 billion business. The strategy was unveiled in June alongside all of the company's franchisees.

The new strategy's central goal is to make McDonald's customers' 'first choice,' pursued through four pillars: 'Menu Next' (evolving the menu), 'Consumer Next' (modernizing how the company engages customers), 'Restaurant Next' (running restaurants with AI capabilities), and 'People Next' (making work easier for restaurant employees — the company's restaurants employ two million people worldwide). Kempczinski describes the approach not as classic segmentation but as 'occasion-based': the company analyzes customers not by segment, but by consumption occasion — breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

The company notes that roughly 85% of the US population visits McDonald's at least once a year, and positions itself as a lowercase-d 'democratic brand' — open to everyone. As an example of the new strategy's success, Kempczinski points to China: the China division, with 8,000 restaurants, has built its own technology infrastructure, where restaurant managers now get guidance via phone from an AI system on how to run a shift, what inventory to order, and when to service equipment.

Kempczinski says the company almost never invents an entirely new idea and forces it on all 5,000-plus franchisees at once — instead, it looks for solutions already tested and proven successful somewhere in the system, then works to scale them globally. That approach makes it easier for franchisees to embrace change, since they're often backing an idea they or a peer has already tried themselves.