Chris Kempczinski: It all goes back to the strategy of Accelerating the Arches. And when we laid out Accelerating the Arches, we talked about our MCD framework, it’s about great marketing, it’s about focusing on core menu, it’s about three Ds, now the four Ds. And so one of the things that I — and that underlying all of that is about great execution. And I think one of the things that, for me, gives me confidence about the strength and resiliency of our business, not just in the US but around the world, is that it’s broad based. It’s not being driven by one-off promotion. It’s not being driven by kind of just silver bullets. You’re seeing it because of consistent execution across the entire strategy. So you’re seeing evidence of where we continue, I think, to up our game from a marketing standpoint, that’s driving strength around our brand scores.
Our brand has never been in a better place than it’s been. Our focus on core menu and things like best burger, the focus that we have on chicken, we’re gaining share in both chicken and beef which — off of core menu, which has a lot of benefits. And then we continue to do a great job of executing against our three Ds and will against our four Ds. Digital for us is something that is actually, I think, a virtuous loop, where you’re seeing the stronger our digital business becomes, the more that it’s driving customer engagement in digital. Our app downloads, and when you compare us to anybody else in the industry, it’s orders of magnitude difference and that creates some economies of scale that become self perpetuating over time. So as I look out for the business, for us, it’s going to be about continuing to do all the things that we’re doing on that.
And underneath that is the execution that we’re seeing in our restaurants. And with the PACE program that we put in place last year, it was in most of our major markets. This year, we added the US. But you’re seeing service times come down across the board in our major markets. You’re seeing CSAT or customer satisfaction scores go up in all of our restaurants. So I wouldn’t attribute our success to any one thing. It’s the fact that we’re executing across the entire Accelerating the Arches playbook that gives me confidence. And this is a momentum business. When you’ve got momentum, it helps and it can be self perpetuating. Now you don’t want to get complacent on that. But the fact that we have momentum, I think, is driving an ambition. It continues to drive our operators’ willingness to invest because they do see that as we play this out, we’ve got a long runway, and we certainly believe we have a long runway here at McDonald’s.
Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Chris Carril at RBC.
Chris Carril: So Chris, I know you touched on this in your prepared remarks and you plan to share more at the Investor Day, but could you maybe expand a bit more on the development outlook as we think about the second half of this year as well as beyond 2023? You’ve seen strong top line momentum, improving margins and you’ve made organizational changes to help support development. So what are the key unlocks here or next steps going forward to accelerate new restaurant openings?
Chris Kempczinski: Well, we will share much more detail about this at the Analyst Day at the end of the year. So I won’t get into the specifics. But I will talk about the activities that we’re doing right now, which is one of the starting point is just looking at our opportunity with traditional restaurants. And if you think about — over the last several years, our focus has been largely globally around reinvestment. In the US, we haven’t grown units going all the way back to 2014. If you go to a number of our large IOM markets, the growth there from a unit standpoint has been pretty anemic compared to what we think is the opportunity. And so we are doing a very detailed, both top down and bottoms up look, to say what is the development opportunity that exists in each of those markets and how do we go and exploit that.
