McMetaverse? How McDonald's Is Jumping Into the Digital World

Iconic fast-food restaurant McDonald's (MCD -0.46%) is taking its first steps to join the metaverse, offering customers the ability to interact with its brand and its products online in a new way. 

In this video clip from "The Virtual Opportunities Show," recorded on Feb. 15, Motley Fool contributor Rachel Warren explores how McDonald's and other restaurant companies are approaching this new digital space.

Rachel Warren: We've been seeing all these crazy stories coming out in recent months of companies that you would never associate with the metaverse, like Walmart filing patents, trademarks, to enter this space. Well it was reported last week that McDonald's had filed trademarks for virtual restaurants in the metaverse. Where you can go in this virtual restaurant in the metaverse with your avatar, you can order your quarter-pounder or whatever you want to order from McDonald's and then it will be delivered to you in the real world so you can get that actual burger in real life. The other thing that's interesting about this though, and I guess McDonald's has filed a bunch of various trademarks to do this. They're wanting to do it where they can not only deliver food in-person, but you could also, I guess, order online and then receive your food online. Again, I'm not really sure what the gratification behind that would be like if I ordered my French fries, I want to actually eat them. I don't know that having them delivered digitally would do it for me, but still, that's a very cool idea.

Along those lines, another company like McDonald's that has done this, Panera Bread. They have their trademarks, they've filed they've termed it the Paneraverse. We can be seeing all sorts of these restaurant chains entering their own iteration of the metaverse. But that article that was noted in the Slido on Inc.com, "McDonald's discovers the golden ticket to making money in the metaverse: Here are three easy-to-copy keys to making real money in the metaverse." This article notes these three things as being sell what sells for you, meet people where they are and offer a clear value.

Obviously this is clearly what McDonald's is doing. But you can see how those types of points would really apply to almost any company that wants to enter. Even these companies that we have more associated with, like traditional brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart that are entering the space. The idea being, if you can sell something that people are interested in buying in the real world, and there's a use case behind it, pretty much anything that would be a viable way to generate revenue and profits in the real world that could also translate into the metaverse. Really interesting to see that McDonald's is doing this. They recently released their full-year and fourth-quarter earnings. This isn't a stock I follow super closely, but now I'm looking at it a little more closely because of this whole metaverse aspect of it. But in the full year 2021 global comparable sales were up 17% compared to the prior year. Consolidated revenues were up 21% as were systemwide sales. The company generated cash from operations to the tune of $9.1 billion and free cash flow was up 54% year over year. Really, really solid performance from this restaurant stock. Clearly it's tapping into new means of revenue growth. Yeah guys, if you're interested in McDonald's, this is one to watch.