Upon request, customers can receive a free 8-oz. specialty coffee. The company said the promotion will run into 2009.
McDonald's has been gradually rolling out specialty [image-nocss] coffee over the past year, said the report, and it is now available in about 30% of its nearly 14,000 U.S. outlets.
Analyst said that specialty coffee seemed like it was off to a slow start, and other experts have made similar observations. But McDonald's says sales are in line with expectations.
The weakening economy may give the McDonald's McCafe concept a boost at the expense of Starbucks, according to a report cited by the newspaper from Steve West, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.
A McDonald's specialty coffee is about 75 cents cheaper than Starbucks' and is "a good quality product," West wrote. "Are they Starbucks quality? We will not go that far." But the battered economy will give consumers an incentive to trade down to McDonald's, he wrote.
Larry Miller, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research report this week cited by the Tribune that McDonald's already has taken a bite from Starbucks. RBC has been commissioning coffee research over the past year, and its November survey marked the first time McDonald's took market share from Starbucks, the report said.
RBC's survey takes into account all coffee, and McDonald's has had significant success with its regular coffee since reformulating it in early 2006.
Specialty coffee requires a special and expensive buildout at each restaurant. Although not every restaurant has the space, most do; about 75% of the Chicago-area McDonald's that can accommodate the buildout are selling the beverages, company spokesperson Danya Proud told the paper.
Richard Adams, a San Diego-based consultant to McDonald's franchisees, told the Tribune that normally when McDonald's launches a new product in a new market, it is available in considerably more stores. But Proud wrote that specialty coffee's rollout is not unusual. She said all Chicago-area outlets that can accommodate the new coffees should have them by January.
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