On July 1, Don Thompson finishes his first 12 months as CEO of McDonald’s, the $27 billion fast-food Goliath based in Oak Brook. How did the year go? He declined repeated interview requests by Chicago, so I decided to size up some of his recent public statements—and found one or two, well, whoppers.
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HE SAID
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TO
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TRUE?
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| “We’re excited about chicken.” | Carl Quintanilla of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on April 26 | Yes. In 2012, for the second year in a row, Mickey D’s sold more pounds of chicken than beef. Thompson helped: He brought back Mighty Wings! |
| McDonald’s had “mixed first-quarter performance.” | Wall Street analysts on the company’s quarterly earnings call on April 19 | Yes, if “mixed” means “bad.” In the first quarter of 2013, same-store sales were down 1 percent globally compared with the year-ago period. That’s the first such decline in a decade |
| It doesn’t “target people of color with subversive tactics.” | An activist at the company’s shareholders’ meeting on May 23 who complained about the company’s “predatory” marketing to “children of color” | You be the judge. In April, McDonald’s signed the teenage gymnast Gabby Douglas as the latest in a long string of athlete endorsers, mostly black. |
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“We do not sell junk food.” |
A nine-year-old girl who questioned him at the shareholders’ meeting | Ha! In Japan in May, McDonald’s unveiled the Mega Potato: a pound of fries with 1,142 calories, 57 grams of fat, and 800 milligrams of sodium. |