Still not lovin' it: McDonald's sales in US drop for seventh straight quarter

Try as it might, McDonald’s is still having a hard time getting customers to go back to lovin’ it.

The fast food giant – once the go-to for burgers – has reported yet another drop in sales at established US locations, the seventh straight quarter of falls. Despite multiple promotions and the return of the hipster Hamburglar, sales fell 2%. Overall, McDonald’s profit declined 13% to $1.2bn, down from $1.39bn a year earlier.

Total revenue was $6.5bn, ahead of the $6.45bn Wall Street expected.

Last year, McDonald’s profit dropped 15%. The turnaround plan being implemented by Steve Easterbrook, the CEO who was appointed in January, is supposed to turn that trend around.

“We have made meaningful progress since announcing the initial steps of McDonald’s turnaround plan in early May,” Easterbrook said on Thursday. “While our second-quarter results were disappointing, we are seeing early signs of momentum.”

According to Easterbrook, global sales at established locations are expected to be positive in the third quarter. During the second quarter, McDonald’s said the sales figure rose 1.2% in Europe and fell 4.5% in the segment including Asia, the Middle East and Africa. On a global basis, the figure fell 0.7%.

McDonald’s has 36,000 locations worldwide.

It’s not just the US market where McDonald’s is losing ground to competitors. The world’s largest burger chain is competing for the love of UK customers with a string of artisan US burger joints like Smashburger, Shake Shack and Five Guys.

McDonald’s has admitted it created some of its own problems, such as letting its menu get too complicated. That affected wait times and order accuracy. As part of the turnaround plan, Easterbrook stressed that the company needs “sharper focus on what [the customers] want”.

McDonald’s has spent the first half of 2015 attempting to figure out what its customers want. In recent months, the company has announced an all-day breakfast menu, allowed customers to build their own burgers, launched a customer complaint app in Japan, said it will stop selling chicken raised with antibiotics and announced an effort to help end deforestation. Yet it seems none of these moves have paved a way back into its customers’ hearts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.