The NEXT strategy, announced in June at the company's biennial franchisee convention, is built around upgrading food quality, value, hospitality, and menu innovation. Wednesday's event filled in the operational details: McDonald's intends to streamline how its kitchens run, roll out a new restaurant design format, deepen staff training programs, and broaden adoption of ArchIQ, its AI-driven platform that handles functions like drive-thru order-taking.#

The design of the new "restaurants" looks decent too – better than the current ones. The playground for kids might even return (which I have mixed feelings about).#

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I don't know why the headline mentions Burger King. I mean they're both fast food burger chains. But Burger King isn't even in the same league. Though apparently in the last quarter McDonald's global sales grew +1.3%, whereas Burger King's grew +8.6%. So maybe they are catching.#

I ate a McDonald's yesterday, and briefly considered Burger King instead. But the only thing BK has going for it over the Golden Arches is the nice smoky (and I'm sure entirely artificial) flavour of its burgers. The chips aren't as good. And the nuggets are abysmal.#

To be fair though, I'm a big fan of the rebrand they did a while back:#

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