Move over KFC, Popeyes and Chick-fil-A. McDonald’s wants a bigger bite of the chicken business.

Having already seen its shares plunge by 27 per cent from an all-time high in late February, the world’s biggest fast-food group put chicken at the heart of a new strategy unveiled on Wednesday. McDonald’s is looking to capture more of the fastest-growing segment of the quick-service restaurants market at a time when consumers are watching their spending and GLP-1 drugs are reshaping eating habits.

“We are global leaders by a wide margin in beef with more than 40 per cent share in a $50 billion (€44 billion) category that is growing around 3 per cent a year. Chicken is a nearly $130 billion category, growing more than 5 per cent a year,” Jill McDonald, the group’s chief restaurant experience officer, said during investor day presentations. The aim is to grow its market share, now in the “high teens”, by 1.5 percentage points by 2030, she said.

The new strategy – dubbed Next – has earmarked $8.5 billion to help franchisees modernise restaurants over the next decade (through rent relief and capital supports). It has also targeted a greater market share in beverages, and eyes a scaling of AI to automate routine tasks like drive-through ordering.

Investors, however, aren’t nibbling, with McDonald’s shares extending their losses in recent days. It brings the decline over the past seven months to 34 per cent. They are also the second-worst-performing shares on the Dow Jones Industrial Average index so far this year, behind Nike.

McDonald’s price weakness has been driven mainly by slowing US same-store sales growth as consumers rein in spending as they grapple with resurging inflation. At the same time, the industry’s traditional advantage – selling cheap food at high volumes with the help of relatively low running costs – has been squeezed by sharp rises in food, energy and labour costs.

The average price of a Big Mac in the US has risen by a third since 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Big Mac Index, which was developed by The Economist 40 years ago.

McDonald’s same-store sales growth slowed to an annual rate of 0.8 per cent in the second quarter – pointing to an actual decline in sales volumes, after price increases to keep up with inflation. The market was actually expecting a 1.1 per cent increase that quarter, down from 3.9 per cent in the first and 6.8 per cent for the last three months of 2025.

Executives conceded to analysts during the investor day presentation on Wednesday that US same-store sales would be “slightly negative” for the third quarter.

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While the strategy sets out solid medium-term targets, Deutsche Bank analysts concluded in a report that it did little to settle a debate on when US same-store sales might reach an inflection point.

Morgan Stanley analysts said investors are sceptical about the strategy as quick-service restaurants remain under pressure and the pay-off and impact of McDonald’s investment programme is seen as “distant and uncertain” – especially given the group’s patchy execution record in recent times. Chief executive Chris Kempczinski acknowledged in August that a push on the group’s new so-called value menu hadn’t been delivering as much traffic from lower-income consumers as hoped.

McDonald’s may have to wait until it shows some sales wins from its new strategy for investors to start putting in orders for shares, said Morgan Stanley, as it reiterated its equal-weight – or neutral – stance on the stock.

“We are equal-weight rated not so much because we don’t find the Next plans credible or material, but more so because the time for them to work may be lengthy, and we still struggle with near-term catalysts,” it said.

McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food chain, is essentially a burger and fries business wrapped around a giant real-estate empire. Although 95 per cent of its 45,000 locations in more than 100 countries are franchised, the group generally owns or holds long-term leases on the premises and franchisees pay for fitout. At the end of last year, it had almost $46 billion of real-estate assets, albeit valued at cost rather than market value.

McDonald’s restaurants globally made $139.4 billion of system-wide sales last year. McDonald’s Corporation’s own revenues amounted to $26.9 billion – with 62 per cent of this coming from rent, royalties and fees paid by franchises, 36 per cent from sale of food in company-operated restaurants, and the remaining 2 per cent from the likes of technology fees and brand licensing.

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Franchisees purchase ingredients from independent suppliers that must meet the group’s specifications and standards. Dawn Meats, for example, supplies the beef for every burger sold across the 95 restaurants in the Republic of Ireland, which are operated by 19 franchisees.

The group’s business model is largely dependent on the McDonald’s offering remaining attractive to franchisees, who pay rent and royalties for the right to operate under its brand.

While McDonald’s expects its number of locations to rise by about 4.5 per cent for this year and next – marking its fastest period of new unit openings ever – it sees the rate slowing to as low as 3 per cent over each of the following three years. RBC Capital Markets analysts said that Wall Street had been expecting an average of 4.3 per cent annual expansion over the period.

Most of the growth in outlets is expected in developing economies like China, India, Brazil and the Philippines, where average restaurant sales – and royalties flowing back to headquarters in Chicago – will be much lower than in McDonald’s more mature developed markets.

Back to chicken, McDonald, the group’s chief restaurant experience officer (no relation to its founders), sees a plethora of opportunities – from McNuggets, which have been around for more than four decades, to tapping into the current global protein craze with “grilled chicken sandwiches and wraps”.

Analysts estimate that a 1.5 percentage point gain in chicken market share by 2030 would translate into 5-6 per cent growth in McDonald’s total system sales over the period.

But McDonald’s goal will ruffle feathers in an already fiercely competitive corner of the market. Chicken specialists are unlikely to surrender share without a response.