McDonald’s Plans to ‘Do It All for You’ (Again) With Massive Restaurant Expansion

For the first time in a decade, McDonald’s is bringing back its ultra-popular Monopoly promotion. Fittingly, the company is also in the midst of its own mad dash to snap up real estate on Boardwalk, Park Place and just about everywhere else.

In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Chief Development Officer Tabassum Zalotrawala said the company is on a mission to open 10,000 new locations over the next four years, bringing its worldwide total to 50,000. That will make one of the world’s most ubiquitous restaurant chains more, well, ubiquitous. 

The Sun Never Sets on the Golden Arches

Through the past few years of widespread inflation, McDonald’s has been locked in a no-holds-barred Value Menu War against its fast-food brethren. But that has only sparked an internal battle between McDonald’s franchise foot soldiers and their corporate generals, with the former saying their profits are getting crushed by the latter’s push for exorbitant discounts and promotions. (In August, the two sides reached a treaty, agreeing to sell eight popular combo meals at a 15% discount to usual prices, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.) 

Last year, a survey from the UBS Evidence Lab found that the number of fast-food customers who would describe McDonald’s as having “good value” fell to its lowest point in 10 years. Same-store sales growth slowed to its lowest rate in a decade in 2024.

The only way out? Expand. And the best way to expand? Follow the people:

• In choosing its new locations, Zalotrawala says McDonald’s will focus on regions where it has fallen behind population growth in recent years; for instance, one-fourth of the new locations are planned for Texas, where 2 million people have moved since 2020. 
• The strategy, which is in keeping with its 1970s jingle, “We Do It All for You,” is a marked turnaround for the Golden Arches, whose total number of US locations declined by over 900 from 2015 to 2021. The expansion comes after McDonald’s last year increased royalty fees from 4% of gross sales to 5% for new franchise owners in the US and Canada.

Starburst: At 50,000 locations, McDonald’s should return to being neck-and-neck with rapidly expanding Chinese beverage chain Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, which exploded from 21,000 locations to a world-leading 46,000 locations from 2021 to 2024. One chain you won’t be seeing more of is Starbucks, which spent the summer closing hundreds of stores amid new CEO Brian Niccol’s $1 billion cost-restructuring plan. If your favorite Starbucks is closing, fear not: We’re sure the one right around the corner is still open. Hopefully.