Costumers aren’t “lovin it.” Profits have drastically suffered for McDonald’s ever since July when a food scandal erupted in China. A food supplier located in Shanghai was found to be distributing tainted meat to McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks. McDonald’s lovers were shocked when a video of the Shanghai food processing plant surfaced, secretly recorded by a Shanghai news broadcaster. In the video, workers pick up meat without using gloves, claim some of the meat is “foul,” mix old and new meat into processors until it passes inspection and fudge the expiration dates. Once the video was released, the factory was shut down. After the scandal broke out, Starbucks, KFC and Pizza Hut identified specific foods on the menu that were affected by the scandal, but McDonald’s did not. Profits for the chain are down 30 percent and while it hit hardest in Asia, sales were down all over the world. “By all measures, our performance fell short of our expectations,” CEO Don Thompson says in a statement of their third quarter slump.
The month after the scandal broke is whenMcDonald’slost the most of their third quarter sales; the International Business Times reports they had the worst monthly sales that month than in over a decade. Also contributing to the loss are the successes of Chipotle and Panera Bread, whose stocks have sky rocketed. To help regain customers’ trust,McDonald’srecently launched a new marketing campaign, aimed at showing how good and trustworthy the meat they use is.
McDonald’s sales down after meat scandal
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