McDonald’s Weighs Partial Sale Of Dynamic Yield

McDonald’s is considering selling part of a company it acquired to boost digital orders, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

McDonald’s bought Dynamic Yield for more than $300 million, according to WSJ. The Israel-based company, which operates independently within McDonald’s, states on its website that it was “designed from the very beginning to be open and flexible” and “combines the strength of a unified repository for data with the tools to activate personalized interactions across web, apps and email.”

Dynamic Yield has continued to pursue and work with clients other than its owner. The company says on its website that it works with more than 350 brands and helps create “individualized experiences for more than 600 million users each month.” Clients include Ikea, Urban Outfitters, Sephora and Hallmark.

McDonald’s, Dynamic Yield says in its marketing materials, is “integrating our decision technology into its digital menu displays [to] enhance the experience with food recommendations based on things like time of day, weather, current restaurant traffic and trending menu items.”

But according to a telephone call with franchise owners led by Vicki Chancellor, a franchisee herself, and monitored by WSJ, the investment hasn’t paid off.

“The return on that investment is just not there,” she said, per the report.

Chancellor said McDonald’s would return $6 million to a franchisee-backed advertising fund that had been deployed to run Dynamic Yield, WSJ reported.

WSJ quoted Liad Agmon, founder and CEO of Dynamic Yield, as having said in a prepared statement that a partial sale of the company by McDonald’s “has been discussed from the outset and now feels like the right time to explore that possibility.”