There is no question about McDonald's being the leading successful fast-food restaurant spread around the world, constantly present through creative ads, jingles and promotions sticking to everyone everywhere (already singing the I'm lovin' it in your head).
When looking at McDonald's as an organization, it is clearly favorable about two things - tasty signature meals and strong brand recognition. Building the brand's name for over 70 years now has clearly led to an unimaginable profits and high brand awareness with customers (https://bit.ly/2JfNpoE), positioning McDonald's at the top not only amongst fast-food, but rather restaurants in general.
However, with great power comes great responsibility, and it seems like that's exactly what is giving McDonald's trouble - consumers have developed a more sensitive consciousness towards health and food, and are now seeking for companies with dining venues to be 'put under the microscope' and share all the information on supplying, preparing and serving foods in a transparent fashion.
Several problems have already been linked to McDonald's in the past and are well familiar to the public, for example, extreme animal torture and conditions in the farms supplying the fast-food chain with meet (http://mcdonaldscruelty.com/), but, as it is often said ''out of sight out of mind'' is what keeps their business still at a high position on the market.
In May this year, the fast-food restaurant faced a big crisis having one of their products, lettuce blend to be specific, contaminated with a parasite causing horrible intestinal illness that even required an antibiotics treatment in order to be overcome with some consumers. 507 cases of contamination were recorded in 16 US states, including some patients that had to be hospitalized. US Food and Drug Administration even had to write about it to address the public: https://bit.ly/2AEIzgZ.
The issue was so big that even the restauran-s CEO Steve Easterbrook gave a statement addressing the problem: "All those restaurants have been fully replenished with a new supply and we continue to trade fully" .(https://read.bi/2zryOTt)
Half a year later - a new controversy. The nightmare continues as Metro.co.uk conducted a research on touchscreen machines in eight McDonald's restaurants - six in London and two in Birmingham, only to find traces of coliform (aka faecal bacteria) as published on November 28th. Additionally, one of the machines also had staphylococcus, a bacteria that can cause blood poisoning and toxic shock syndrome, as well as listeria bacteria that can lead to miscarriages and stillbirths in pregnant women. Dr Paul Matewele from London Met University also stated: ''Klebsiella is also from the gut and mouth, they are associated with urinary tract infections, septicemia and diarrhoea.'' (the research: https://bit.ly/2E3VTQ5)
It is far from an issue - it is a real ongoing crisis that the fast-food restaurant has yet to address as they have not posted anything related to this problem profiles or website. The public has 'gone savage' with the comments all over social media, building their dissatisfaction with McDonald's more by each day the restaurant chooses to stay silent.
No doubt - they have to be given some time to think and respond, but it's just irresponsible taking this much time to address the issue, giving the consumers wider space for speculations which can lead to hurting the brand's name. Hopefully the answers will appear sooner than the next crisis...