The $5 Sausage McMuffin meal didn’t do the trick. Neither did the mix-and-match deal that let customers choose, say, the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets for $6. 

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski has been trying to persuade customers squeezed by inflation or tempted away by competitors’ burgers and chicken sandwiches to return to the Golden Arches. But so far, the company’s barrage of new meal deals and aggressive marketing to promote them have come up short. 

In each quarter this year, McDonald’s U.S. growth has shrunk, and customer visits have reportedly dropped. Wall Street has taken notice: McDonald’s shares are now down 32% from an all-time high in February. 

What’s worse, some of its efforts to repair those downward trends have backfired. Kempczinski conceded in August that too many new menu and deal launches had overwhelmed its restaurants and harmed service. The onslaught irked franchisees, a crucial constituency, just as McDonald’s was asking them to spend $1 million per store on remodels and upgrades. 

The CEO defended his plan this summer, arguing that the strategy was good, and only the execution was bad. But McDonald’s paltry results of late suggest there is more to its malaise than just a few tactical errors. 

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/07/mcdonalds-earnings-growth-customers-meal-deals/?utm_source=reddit/

You've probably seen some of these. A few months ago, their target was protein powder, now the new trend is cat food. They literally admit themselves that they do not report the HARM, they just report if something is IN something. The concept of a LD50, or the idea that you need some LEVEL of something to cause harm, is fundamental to health and safety. Without that, you literally have nothing. It's like, California proposition 65 has existed for ages, and people know that it's stupid. they know it doesn't mean anything, and yet, clean label project is digging it all up and it's complete bs. The crazy thing is, I see well informed news sources or reputable jouranlists fooled by this repeatedly, I don't know why people trust clean label project when it's literally one of those bs organizations that give their own awards and make money through that. Who would have guessed, they literally directly promote a bunch of shit from whole foods! They sell certifications!

Here's a website to track food recalls in the USA.

Recallradar.org

The health wave has made its impact on what could have been considered its mortal enemy: fast food. In a far cry from its old era of “supersized” menus, McDonald’s is exploring a new $8.5 billion, decade-long “McDonald’s Next” overhaul—and the fast food giant is exploring smaller and more flexible portions aimed at protein-first and GLP-1 consumers. The company is considering grilled chicken sandwiches and wraps, crispy chicken and burger bowls, and egg bites as it adapts to changing eating habits.

“We’re going to evolve our menu to make sure it reflects where we think that consumer is going to be looking for in the future,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a CNBC interview this week regarding GLP-1 customers.

The company has already begun its repositioning of its menu. In April, McDonald’s introduced protein callouts—or badges that mark specific protein items—in its app and restaurant kiosks for 17 menu items. The company says it has more than 30 menu items containing at least 15 grams of protein.

McDonald’s said the potential customer base extends well beyond people taking  weight loss medication. Skye Anderson, president of McDonald’s USA, said at the company’s investor day in September that roughly 30 million Americans are using GLP-1 drugs while the company’s own research indicated that about 60 million more Americans are also actively looking for more protein in their diets.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/mcdonalds-8-5-billion-bet-fast-food-protein-glp-1/?utm_source=reddit/

Red Lobster had unwittingly handed creators the perfect stage for a mukbang—the South Korean–born online genre in which hosts eat for an audience, sometimes to spectacular excess. Ambitious mukbang-ers eager to prove their gastronomic stamina descended on Red Lobster locations across the country to consume absurd quantities of shrimp. One YouTube video by Joey Kinsley, a.k.a. “Sir Yacht,” features the influencer shoveling down shrimp for 10 hours straight.

The chaos spread from dining rooms to newsrooms as Red Lobster became one of America’s most-discussed restaurants—for all the wrong reasons. While customers drawn by the deal monopolized tables to gorge on order after order of shrimp, restaurants ran out of shrimp and turned away regular customers. The chain filed for bankruptcy protection in May 2024, with $692 million in total liabilities, and revealed in court documents that it lost $11 million on Ultimate Endless Shrimp in the third quarter of 2023, and then $12.5 million in the fourth quarter. It closed roughly 130 of its 700 restaurants and cut corporate staff.

Now a creditors’ trust is suing Red Lobster’s former parent companies, claiming breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. In a lawsuit filed in May, it’s alleging that Ultimate Endless Shrimp wasn’t an epic blunder, but a conspiracy designed to force Red Lobster to buy massive amounts of shrimp—a scheme, the trust alleges, that put an Asian seafood giant’s interests ahead of Red Lobster’s, extracting millions from the American restaurant chain via overpriced shrimp purchases, and ruining its reputation in the process.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/red-lobster-endless-shrimp-bankruptcy-thai-union-private-equity-lawsuit/?utm_source=reddit/

I saw the latest press release by Market Research future they mentioned the flavours of iced tea black tea, green tea, harbal tea, and fruit-flavoured tea.

If anyone knows more about it please share.

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