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<p>If the people won&#8217;t go to McDonald&#8217;s, then the Big Macs must go to them.</p><p>At least that&#8217;s the plan.</p><p>After a two-month test run in Florida, McDonald&#8217;s announced recently it is preparing to roll out meal delivery for its menu items in the United States. The hope, the fast-food giant said, is to make up for years of slipping sales by making one of the world&#8217;s most ubiquitous chains even more inescapable.</p><p>&#8220;Because of our extraordinary footprint, McDonald&#8217;s is uniquely positioned to become the global leader in delivery,&#8221; the company said in a statement, adding that nearly 75 percent of Americans live within three miles of a McDonald&#8217;s.</p><p>&#8220;Restaurant delivery is a $100 billion market and it&#8217;s exploded,&#8221; McDonald&#8217;s senior vice president Lucy Brady said at an event with investors this week, according to Bloomberg News. &#8220;There&#8217;s significant opportunity.&#8221;</p><p>The food-delivery business &#8212; dominated by pizza for the better part of a century &#8212; has grown robust in recent years. Much of that growth, analysts say, has come from third-party services such as Seamless, Postmates and DoorDash, which partner with restaurants to deliver food to consumers&#8217; homes.</p><p>Chains including Burger King and the Cheesecake Factory now offer delivery, as do several local full-service eateries.</p><p>&#8220;Delivery is the single biggest trend in the restaurant industry right now,&#8221; said Jonathan Maze, senior financial editor of the trade publication Nation&#8217;s Restaurant News. &#8220;Numerous restaurant chains are moving in this direction, and there&#8217;s no reason McDonald&#8217;s shouldn&#8217;t do the same.&#8221;</p><p>The fast-food giant already offers delivery in Asian countries, including China, South Korea and Singapore. Last year, its delivery business in China grew 30 percent.</p><p>But analysts said success in those markets might may not translate to the United States.</p><p>&#8220;The cost of labor is pretty low in those places, so you can see how delivery would make economic sense,&#8221; said Ajay Chopra, general partner at Trinity Ventures, a venture capital firm in San Francisco. &#8220;It will be trickier for them to make the economics work here.&#8221;</p><p>McDonald&#8217;s partnered with UberEats for its pilot in Florida and, according to the Chicago Tribune, also has been in talks with other third-party services, including Postmates and GrubHub. Analysts said those partnerships make sense for McDonald&#8217;s &#8212; the company won&#8217;t have to hire extra delivery employees or invest large amounts of money to get the program started &#8212; but they might not be ideal for customers.</p><p>UberEats, for example, charges a flat $4.99 delivery fee on all orders. While people may be willing to pay that for a $30 order from a Thai restaurant, some analysts questioned whether customers could justify paying that much of a premium on a $7 extra-value meal. UberEats is available in 32 American cities, including Philadelphia, Washington and Houston.</p><p>&#8220;The cost associated with delivery may make it cost prohibitive for many people, especially in smaller towns and cities where people aren&#8217;t used to paying high prices for delivery,&#8221; said Bonnie Riggs, a restaurant analyst for the market research firm NPD Group. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to remember this is fast food.&#8221;</p><p>Analysts said there may be other issues, too.</p><p>&#8220;Pizza has been successful because cheese is a good insulator and the product can withstand a 20-minute delivery journey,&#8221; a recent JPMorgan report said. &#8220;The same goes for Asian, Italian and sandwiches. Other categories don&#8217;t fare as well. Coffee, for example, has some impediments, as do burgers and fries, which tend to get soggy quickly.&#8221;</p><p>The move to delivery is just one way McDonald&#8217;s hopes to win back customers. The company &#8212; which has lost an estimated 500 million transactions since 2012 &#8212; also plans to offer mobile ordering and payment options, as well as curbside pick-up, table service and self-serve kiosks to a number of U.S. locations.</p><p>&#8220;All of this is kind of a no-brainer for McDonald&#8217;s,&#8221; said Maze, of Nation&#8217;s Restaurant News.</p><p>&#8220;But,&#8221; he added, &#8220;McDonald&#8217;s fries are absolutely the best when they&#8217;re served fresh. How will they hold up? That&#8217;s a big question.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Washington Post</p></bylineMeta></div>

Coming soon: A Big Mac delivered to your door. But will you want it?