McDouble: The One-Slice Secret to Survival

Feb. 4, 2009— -- In the past year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped about 4,000 points, the unemployment rate went up more than two percentage points and approximately 300 Starbucks have closed.

So it may come as a surprise what one large American company is saying about business these days.

"Our business is great right now," said Jan Fields, the chief operating officer for McDonald's USA.

In these dark and dreary times, the fast-food giant is indeed looking good. McDonald's sales increased nearly 7 percent last year. And they are one of just two companies among the Dow 30 whose stock actually went up in 2008.

Fields says more people went to McDonald's this past year than the year before.

With almost 14,000 restaurants in the U.S. alone, McDonald's buys about 800 million pounds of beef, 31 million pounds of tomatoes, and 260 million pounds of cheese annually.

In fact, cheese has been weighing heavily on the minds of the food giant lately. For the past five years, McDonald's customers have been enjoying not one, but two slices of cheese in their double cheeseburgers, a favorite item appearing on the Dollar Menu. But with commodity prices spiking in recent years, something had to be done.

Steve Kilian is a McDonald's franchisee who owns 32 McDonald's restaurants in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kilian was well aware of what a great value the $1 double cheeseburger was.

"It was the best deal out there," he said. "We would hear from customers a lot, [asking]: 'How can you sell it so cheaply?'"

The truth was, they couldn't. At least not as cheaply as they had been. If they continued selling the double cheeseburger for a dollar, Kilian says simply, "We would have not been profitable."

Greg Watson, the vice president of marketing for McDonald's USA, knew something had to give.

"Commodity costs, beef costs were going up, cheese costs were going up," Watson said. "And when you are selling something at a dollar you are pretty limited on what you can do there from a pricing standpoint."