You may remember, just over two years ago, when fast food giant McDonald’s (MCD) launched and shuttered CosMc’s, a restaurant chain focused mainly on beverages. CosMc’s was designed to find out if McDonald’s could poach some of the audience that Starbucks (SBUX) had long enjoyed. McDonald’s later shuttered the whole operation, but as it turns out, the whole thing bore fruit in a strange way, and that fruit is coming to McDonald’s locations soon. McDonald’s investors seemed happy enough, and sent shares up fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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While some wondered why McDonald’s would go to all the trouble of opening up entire new restaurants that were not really restaurants at all, the logic underneath it made sense. There were separate buildings, so the test results would not be tainted. The test would run quickly. They even called on a McDonaldland character that few really remembered in CosMc, a character from 1987 occasionally remembered for trading random items for McDonald’s food to take back to his home planet.
And the end result was six new beverages, which will arrive at McDonald’s locations imminently. We had heard about these previously, including “dirty soda” and new refreshers. But the menu got fleshed out recently, and flavors have emerged. The refreshers coming soon include Blackberry Passion Fruit, Mango Pineapple, and Strawberry Watermelon. The craft sodas, meanwhile, include Dirty Dr. Pepper, Orange Dream, and Sprite Berry Blast.
Bang-Up Print Ads
Meanwhile, McDonald’s is also being noticed for its minimalist print ads, which is a strange thing to be noticed for in this age of online everything and streaming video. But ads from 2018 are making a resurgence as people note unexpected twists within the ads themselves.
The series known as McClocks came from Leo Burnett Germany, and was originally designed to call attention to the 24-hour nature of McDonald’s. But a closer look at the minute segments on those clocks revealed something noteworthy: the colors used were approximately similar to McDonald’s food items. Light tan markers made buns, dark brown markers made burger patties, and so on to effectively assemble representations of food on the backdrop of a clock.
Is McDonald’s Stock a Good Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on MCD stock based on 14 Buys and 12 Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 10.32% loss in its share price over the past year, the average MCD price target of $347.13 per share implies 21.67% upside potential.
