McDonald's Is Repeating Loyalty Metrics That Are Tough to Swallow... (ahem)

Back in August 2025, during the 2Q 2025 earnings call, the McDonald's CEO made some incredible claims about the performance of the MyMcDonald's Rewards program. I did a deep dive into the numbers at the time to see if they could possibly be correct. The conclusion I arrived at: not likely possible. I thought it was worth revisiting as the CFO, on the 4Q 2025 earnings call earlier this week, repeated the same claims. I'll summarize my original analysis below.

As in August, on the call this week the CEO said

"... we know that loyalty increases visit frequency..."

and the CFO said

"...when we get customers into our loyalty program, they visit more often and they spend more over time"

He then repeated the CEO's claims from August:

"...an average customer in the 12 months before they joined our loyalty program visited us 10.5x. In the 12 months after they became a loyalty member, they visited us 26x."

My take: jumping from 10.5 to 26 visits the year after joining is not possible. I've come at it three different ways and always end up with the same result: the average visit frequency for non-members is much higher than 10.5, and the increase in frequency upon joining the loyalty program is far less than 250%.

Assumptions

Average Order Value: $10.00 (slightly higher than $9.45 from Numerator to make calcs easier)

% of Systemwide Sales from U.S. : 41% (per Bullfinches )

% of Sales from Loyalty Members: 25% (CEO on Q2 earnings call)

Even with these ballpark calculations, it becomes clear that the CEO's number don't seem possible, and here's why:

The required number of visitors to achieve reported revenue using these inputs (434MM) is greater than the U.S. population (currently estimated to be 340MM). This means non-member frequency can't be as low as 10.5 annual visits.

And that means the new member frequency is different from 26 annual visits.

In fact,

If 25% of revenue comes from members, visit frequency of 29.75 for non-members and 32.0 for members, an increase of 7.6%, makes the numbers work - a far cry from incremental sales of 250%.

Does this make sense or am I off the mark? A 7.6% increase due to the loyalty program feels a lot more likely than a 250% increase based on my experience. Interested to get feedback from others who may have a different perspective.

Link to the original post here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/something-ceo-mcdonalds-said-rewards-doesnt-add-up-john-c-keenan-rdaee/

Link to the companion post aligning Numerator numbers with McDonald's earnings reports here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7359640334328373249/