McDonald’s (MCD) 14,000 restaurants in the United States are set to debut a new Dollar Menu & More beginning Nov. 4, which will replace its usual dollar value menu.
The tiered value menu will offer $1 items from the Dollar Menu, but include additional low-cost price points, such as sandwiches for $2 and other items around $5.
“This is one of the ways that we can maintain the Dollar Menu in the face of rising commodity and labor pressures, but also get a little more margin basis on some of the products at $2 and some of the products at higher price points,” chief executive Don Thompson said during McDonald’s third-quarter earnings call.
“The franchisees support this.”
The introduction will follow a third quarter in which same-store sales rose only 0.7 percent in the United States, when McDonald’s tried to build sales of new core offerings by moving the Monopoly game up into July and putting a major national ad campaign behind the Mighty Wings limited-time offer. However, Thompson said, while those initiatives performed within expectations, they did not offset traffic weakened by lower consumer confidence and a drag on discretionary spending.
According to a research note from securities analyst Andy Barish of Jefferies, same-store sales in the United States dipped 0.1 percent for McDonald’s, and comparable sales are tracking flat for the month of October.
The stagnant informal-eating-out market is not expected to improve in the fourth quarter in the United States, Thompson said, making the rollout of Dollar Menu & More even more important.
McDonald’s continues to debut new or limited-time offerings, such as its recent Mighty Wings.
