You can see it playing out across a few areas. Firstly, McDonald’s “Famous Orders” platform, where the brand taps a celebrity to showcase their favorite meal, has helped McDonald’s speak to a new generation in authentic ways, Kempczinski said, while also boosting digital engagement. All without adding restaurant complexity since it’s a curation of products already on the menu, not an LTO or product-focused promotion.

The first—Travis Scott’s meal—arrived in September and represented the first time since 1992 a celebrity’s name was featured on McDonald’s lineup, only done prior by Michael Jordan.

It included a fresh beef Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon, and lettuce, medium fries with barbecue sauce, and a Sprite. “The Famous Orders platform was based on a simple idea, but unites all our customers, including famous celebrities, is everyone has their go-to McDonald's order,” Kempczinski said.

The Travis Scott and ensuing J Balvin collaborations broke U.S. records. Yet they only set the stage for the most recent BTS Famous Order, which took McDonald’s ambitions global, connecting marketing, core menu, and digital strategies across 50 markets. It also marked the first time McDonald’s did so with custom packaging and four consecutive weeks of in-app content.

Kempczinski called the results “dynamite,” nodding to a lyric from the South Korean band.

The chain saw “significant” lifts in McNuggets sales and new levels of social engagement. But perhaps most notably, app downloads soared. McDonald’s trended No. 2 on Twitter across the world at one point, and No. 1 in the U.S. BTS and McDonald’s then created a merchandise lineup.

On Thursday, McDonald’s unveiled its next iteration, with hip-hop artist Saweetie. It lands August 9 and includes a Big Mac, 4-piece Chicken McNuggets, medium fries, Sprite, barbecue sauce and, “Saweetie ‘N Sour” sauce. This collaboration will also be served in new packaging.

“This is just the beginning of the digital customer journey at McDonald's,” Kempczinski said. “As we create more personal and seamless McDonald's experiences and make it easier for our crew to connect with our customers, we're giving customers multiple reasons to continue to come back to McDonald's. By using digital, we'll also leverage our advantages in value and convenience, daypart and menu breadth and our biggest advantage, our size and scale.”

Kempczinski said McDonald’s app, especially among younger consumers, is fast-becoming a preferred way to interact with the brand. “And so, our ability to actually have the app connect through the drive-thru to be able to have loyalty be embedded in part of the drive-thru experience, I think all of these things are part of the vision of these different service channels, different ways of accessing McDonald's,” he said. “They all have to work kind of seamlessly together on that. And we're seeing good uptick.”

CFO Kevin Ozan added loyalty drives digital adoption as well as shorter purchase cycles or greater frequency of visits among core customers. Essentially, digital engagement generally inspires loyalty users to return more frequently.

Additionally, McDonald’s rode momentum in Q2 from its Crispy Chicken Sandwich launch, Kempczinski said. It aired an advertising re-hit this quarter, which helped sales stay at elevated levels, Ozan said.

Another boost could be on the way as well, as McDonald’s expects to have nearly all of its domestic dining rooms open by Labor Day, barring a resurgence in COVID cases. Today, it’s about 70 percent.

Kempczinski also addressed the labor shortage pressing restaurants, calling the dynamic a “highly competitive market for talent.”

In May, McDonald’s announced a 10 percent increase in the average hourly wage at corporate U.S. stores, with the goal to reach $15 per hour by 2024.

“I don’t want to declare by any means that it’s easy,” he said, but we’re certainty seeing some improvement.”

Kempczinski said McDoanld’s applications of late “increased pretty significantly.” Even more so in states that ended federal stimulus early. He believes application rates will only improve as expanded benefits roll off. “And I think you're seeing wages go up as well,” he said.

Broadly, McDonald’s wages climbed about 5 percent in the U.S. “It is possible the situation is improving,” Kempczinski said. “I think the tools and some of the ideas that you're seeing our franchisees out there deploying, whether it's things like free child care, sign-on bonuses, etc., that's the power of the McDonald's system at work and the power of our sort of local franchisees innovating and coming up with ways to ensure that they can staff the restaurants.”

In the short term, however, there have been some negative kickbacks. McDonald’s made drive-thru operations a priority a few years ago and saw its service times improve some 30 seconds in response. It’s lost about 3 seconds in recent weeks, Kempczinski said.

“We don’t love that,” he said. “But a big part of it is certainly associated with the staffing challenges in the restaurant, but also the demand that we're seeing in the restaurant. So I'm constructive and positive on the staffing outlook in the back half. I think we're going to continue to make progress, but it certainly is a challenge.”

McDonald’s took roughly 6 percent in pricing, Q2 year-over-year, to get ahead of labor and food inflation. “Certainly, if the inflation pressures continue into next year, that would impact everyone, including us. But right now, I think we feel pretty good about where we are,” Ozan said.

In other initiatives, McDonald’s set a goal to increase purchases of goods and services from diverse-owned suppliers by 10 percent over the next four years (today it sits at 23 percent).

The brand also committed to doubling its national advertising spend with diverse-owned media domestically by 2024.

McDonald’s is playing a role in the “We Can Do This” campaign, too, which continued in July with McCafe cups and McDelivery stickers. Both take customers to vaccines.gov. “It's a national campaign through which McDonald's will supply information in restaurant and drive-thru orders, while supporting a digital campaign to replace vaccine hesitancy with confidence,” Kempczinski said.

Note: Charts courtesy of Placer.ai.