Same-Store Fast Food Sales Losing Weight
Fast food giant McDonalds filed underwhelming first-quarter 2025 earnings this morning, with same-store sales in the United States down 3.6 percent compared to the year-ago period — the worst performance for that particular metric since summer 2020 at the height of the pandemic. That got us wondering how McDonalds’ recent results compared to a few other fast-food rivals. We dug into the data, and belt-tightening among North America or U.S. consumers seems to be in vogue right now. Figure 1, below, shows the change in quarterly same-store sales for McDonalds ($MCD), Chipotle Mexican Grille ($CMG), and Starbucks ($SBUX). First, a few caveats so everyone understands exactly what the data above captures. For McDonalds, the changes are in U.S. stores only. For Chipotle it is all stores, but nearly all Chipotle locations are in the United States and overseas locations are essentially immaterial. For Starbucks it is North America stores, which is primarily the United States and also...