Our plans for europe are focused on building market

Our plans for Europe are focused on building market share as
we continue to execute along Europe’s three key priorities. This
includes upgrading our restaurant ambiance by reimaging
approximately 1,000 restaurants, primarily in France and the U.K.,
as we make progress toward our goal to reimage more than 85%
of our restaurants by the end of 2011. In addition, we expect to
leverage technologies such as self-order kiosks, hand-held order
devices and drive-thru customer order displays to enhance the
customer experience and help speed service. We will further
enhance our local relevance by complementing our tiered-menu
with limited-time food events as well as new snack and dessert
options. Finally, we will remain approachable and accessible as
we continue to educate consumers about the quality and origin of
our food and communicate our sustainable business practices.
In APMEA, we will execute initiatives that best support our
goal to be customers’ first choice for eating out: convenience,
core menu, branded affordability, improved operations and
reimaging. Our convenience initiatives include leveraging the
success of 24-hour or extended operating hours, expanding
delivery service and building drive-thru traffic. At the same time,
we will continue to elevate the role of our classic core and break-
fast menus, complementing both with locally-relevant food news.
We will maximize the impact of our everyday affordability plat-
forms with mid-tier and value lunch programs and intensify our
focus on operations to drive efficiencies. In addition, we will
accelerate our reimaging efforts using a set of standard interior
and exterior designs. Finally, given its size and long-term
McDonald’s Corporation Annual Report 2009 11

potential, we will continue to aggressively open new restaurants
in China with a goal of opening about 600 restaurants over the
next three years.
We will continue to evaluate opportunities to optimize our mix
of Company-operated and franchised restaurants and expect to
refranchise restaurants when and where appropriate. As pre-
viously discussed, our evolution toward a more heavily franchised,
less capital-intensive business model has favorable implications
for the strength and stability of our cash flow, the amount of capi-
tal we invest and long-term returns. As a result, we expect free
cash flow—cash from operations less capital expenditures—will
continue to grow in the future. We remain committed to returning
all this cash to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases
over the long term.
We will remain disciplined financially as we seek to maximize
the impact of all of our spending from selling, general & admin-
istrative expenses to capital expenditures. In making capital
allocation decisions, our goal is to elevate the McDonald’s
experience to drive sustainable growth in sales and market share
while earning strong returns. To that end, about half of the
$2.4 billion of planned 2010 capital expenditures will be invested
to reimage existing restaurants with the other half primarily used
to build new locations.