“I feel very confident that we'll be able to get this thing done.”

In context

“Christopher Kempczinski (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer): Sure. Well, certainly, this is going to be something that we talk a lot more about at Investor Day. And so I don't want to get into too much of the detail here. But I'd say one of the things that I would emphasize is McDonald's > NEXT is not a remodel program. There's a remodel that is part of it, but it's not at its core, a remodel program. It's about all the things that I was talking about, elevating taste and quality in the restaurants, elevating the experience, simplifying the restaurants, et cetera. So as you think about the investment that's required, I think what we've been really thoughtful about on this is there's an investment that happens as part of the regular cadence of remodel activity. Our franchisees every ten years need to be remodeling the restaurants. It's something that's clear in our franchise agreements. It's something that we've talked about. We just so happen to in the U.S. be coming up on a remodel cycle. It's hard to believe, but we're going to be approaching in the next few years another ten-year remodel cycle. So as we're doing that normal remodel cycle, we're also thinking about are there things that we can do on top of that, that can drive additional opportunities to grow sales and simplify operations. The other thing that we're seeing as part of that is there are, I think, a lot of productivity opportunities for the restaurants as well. And so net-net, when you look at the combination of the financial health of our franchisees in the U.S., which is still quite healthy. When we look at their balance sheets, they've got a lot of borrowing capacity still. When you look at the fact that we're entering into a normal remodel cycle where these investments would have to be made anyway, and we're going to be able to self-fund much of the sales growth improvement ideas through productivity opportunities, I feel very confident that we'll be able to get this thing done. But obviously, a lot more conversation that we'll have on that in the next couple of months.”