This week's stories
The chain's summer promotional program has quietly consolidated three of its most-requested limited-time items — French Dip & Swiss, Wagyu Steakhouse Burger and Half-Pound Beef 'n Cheddar — into a single window. We look at what that says about the current promotional calendar, the operator-margin math behind the decision, and how the trio is performing so far in franchisee call notes.
Effective royalty rates across the top eight QSR brands have crept from a 2018 sector average of 4.9% of sales to just over 6.1% in fiscal 2025, and franchisee-side operators are increasingly vocal about the pressure. A breakdown of where the money is actually going.
Wage growth has decelerated meaningfully in the segment over the past two quarters, but the composition of hours worked has changed in ways the aggregate figures obscure. What our labor-cost model actually says about H2 store-level margins.
The January restructure of the MyMcDonald's Rewards program looks, from the outside, like a modest tweak. In practice, it appears to have shifted the digital-order mix meaningfully at company-owned stores. What the six-month data says.
Three sub-500-unit regional QSR brands have been acquired by private equity in the past ninety days. The pattern is not accidental, and it says something specific about where restaurant M&A capital is currently pricing risk.
Six years after Wendy's national breakfast launch and eight years after Taco Bell's, where does the segment actually sit? A quantitative breakdown of daypart share, ticket average, and where the growth is (and isn't) coming from.