{"id":18110,"date":"2024-02-06T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T07:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=18110"},"modified":"2024-02-06T07:58:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T07:58:07","slug":"mcdonalds-blames-israels-war-in-gaza-for-missing-sales-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2024\/02\/mcdonalds-blames-israels-war-in-gaza-for-missing-sales-target\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald\u2019s blames Israel\u2019s war in Gaza for missing sales target"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – McDonald\u2019s has cited Israel\u2019s war in Gaza as a factor in the fast food giant missing its first quarterly sales target in nearly four years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s CEO Chris Kempczinski said on Monday that the war had had a \u201cdisheartening\u201d effect on sales in Middle Eastern countries and other Muslim-majority nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo long as this conflict, this war, is going on \u2026 we\u2019re not expecting to see any significant improvement in this,\u201d Kempczinski said in a conference call.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a human tragedy, what\u2019s going on, and I think that does weigh on brands like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sales growth for the fast food chain\u2019s division for the Middle East, China and India during October-December reached 0.7 percent \u2013 far below market expectations of 5.5 percent.<\/p>\n

The slump comes after customers in Muslim countries called for a boycott of McDonald\u2019s in response to its Israeli franchisee donating thousands of free meals to the Israeli military.<\/p>\n

Following the announcement by McDonald\u2019s Israel, franchisees in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain and Turkey distanced themselves from the donations and collectively pledged millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

While Chicago-based McDonald\u2019s is known as one of the most iconic US brands, most of its restaurants worldwide are locally owned and operated.<\/p>\n

Last week, cafe chain Starbucks slashed its annual sales forecast, citing a slump in business in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Despite its flagging fortunes in Muslim countries, McDonald\u2019s posted relatively strong results overall, with global sales growing 3.4 percent, compared with 8.8 percent in the previous quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe remain confident in the resilience of our business amid macro challenges that will persist in 2024,\u201d Kempczinski said.<\/p>\n

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – McDonald\u2019s has cited Israel\u2019s war in Gaza as a factor in the fast food giant missing its first quarterly sales target in nearly four years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":18111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,1,984,179,194,981,982,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-0_swnen","category-news","category-economy-business","category-world","category-economy","category-international","category-headline"],"views":48,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18112,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18110\/revisions\/18112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}