Hello, and welcome to McDonald's Q2 2019 investors' conference call. At the request of McDonald's Corporation, this conference is being recorded. Following today's presentation, there will be a question and answer session for investors. At that time, investors only may ask a question by pressing star one on their touch-tone phone. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mike Cieplak, Investor Relations Officer for McDonald's Corporation. Mr. Cieplak, you may begin.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call this morning are President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Easterbrook, and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Ozan. Today's conference call is being webcast live and is also being recorded for replay on our website. Before I turn it over to Steve, I want to remind everyone that the forward-looking statements in our earnings release and 8-K filing also apply to our comments. Both documents are available on our website as are reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures. Now, I'll turn it over to Steve.
Good morning. We're pleased to be speaking to you today from our corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago, where we recently celebrated our one-year anniversary in this contemporary urban facility. Returning to Chicago was a deliberate move to get closer to our customers and the trends shaping business and society today. Our new facility was designed to be a modern and inspiring environment, a catalyst for our evolving culture. Our move is also a metaphor for the momentum we're seeing across our business, momentum that has been building since we first launched our turnaround plan. As we've recently passed the four-year mark, I thought it would be important to spend a few minutes reflecting on our journey. Back in May 2015, I announced our initial steps to reset and rebuild our business, including our threefold priorities of driving operational growth, returning excitement to our brand, and unlocking financial value.
At the time, we were keenly aware that the pace of change inside McDonald's was being eclipsed by the pace of change outside our business. We knew we had to evolve with our changing market and consumer dynamics, and we knew incremental progress wasn't going to cut it. Returning to a growth company was going to require big, bold steps and greater personal accountability. We knew success would be determined by the fast beating the slow, by choosing progress over perfection, and moving with a sense of urgency. We set out on a journey to become faster, smarter, and more responsive to changing consumer expectations. We restructured to be closer to customers and faster at the point of impact. We refranchised to drive growth and bring greater insights at a local level. We increased accountability and financial discipline and returned cash to shareholders.
Most importantly, we returned to operating growth. Indeed, within two years, we established a strong foundation, one that was fit for purpose and brought the business to a place where we could begin accelerating growth again. Led to the launch of our Velocity Growth Plan in March of 2017. The plan is rooted in building on the fundamentals that have served our company so well for over 60 years. It's about running better restaurants, offering a compelling menu of delicious and affordable food, and complementing that with hospitality and convenience for our guests. We know that when we create delicious feel-good moments for customers, every visit, every day, customers recognize our efforts and reward us with repeat visits. We also know that we must continuously complement that work with big and powerful moves that keep us relevant and inviting for new generations of guests.
We deploy three accelerators to help us do just that. Our Experience of the Future, or EOTF, digital, and delivery. With these efforts, we are focused on actions that have the biggest benefit to the most customers in the shortest possible time. That's the path to becoming a better McDonald's. Four years in, we did the hard work to put the Velocity Growth Plan and accelerators firmly in place, and we are energized by the broad-based strength in our results. For the quarter, global comparable sales increased 6.5%, which marks four full years of quarterly comp sales growth. This was complemented by positive global comp guest counts. During the quarter, we made strong gains in running great restaurants. We still have work to do because speed of service is so important to our customers. Seconds matter and impact decisions they make on repeat visits.
We're leveraging the power of the system, franchisees, suppliers, and employees to reduce menu complexity, improve operational procedures, deploy new drive-thru crew competitions and incentives, adopt best practices for staffing, and leverage new technologies to make it easier for our teams to take responsibility for performance. We're encouraged by the results we're seeing. We set market level targets early this year and have dropped service times across many markets globally. We're providing a better experience for our customers, and with that, seeing record high customer satisfaction scores this summer. Here in the U.S., the plan we've built with our franchisees is ambitious. Collectively, we recognize the need for change and knew it would be hard work. We spent 2018 deploying major initiatives, including a new value platform, fresh beef, delivery, EOTF modernization, and the restructuring of U.S. field operations.
At the beginning of this year, we said 2019 would be a year to execute on running better restaurants and optimize the initiatives we deployed last year. In restaurant visits with franchisees around the country, I'm seeing the results of focused execution against the plan. Importantly, average franchisee restaurant cash flow has grown eight consecutive months through June, fully overcoming the decline we saw in 2018. Across our International Operated Markets, or IOM, we are seeing continued success. Consistent execution against the Velocity Growth Plan is a winning formula. I had the pleasure to visit Italy during the quarter, and witness first hand, the rigorous focus on operational innovations and improvements. Italy now has posted 10 consecutive quarters of comp sales and guest count growth, with double-digit comp sales and guest count growth for the quarter.
In fact, Italy has outperformed the local informal eating out, or IEO, category for nearly two years now. I saw similar energy and focus when I went from Italy to Poland, which also posted strong comp sales and guest count growth for the quarter. This high-performing market was an early adopter of EOTF and digital. In Warsaw, I saw the positive impact our guest experience leaders have on hospitality, as they greeted customers with a special warmth that made guests feel welcome. Italy and Poland are great examples of markets where we start a best practice and replicate it at scale across other markets. Whether around EOTF rollout, hospitality, operations, or digital, ideas originate in one market and rapidly move to another, creating an environment where all boats rise.
Now let me turn it over to Kevin for a deeper dive into our comp sales trends by market and performance drivers.
Our top-line momentum remains strong. As Steve mentioned, global comp sales increased 6.5% for the quarter, with each operating segment contributing meaningfully to our growth. In the U.S., comp sales were up 5.7%, our highest comp sales increase since the launch of All Day Breakfast back in the Q4 of 2015. Once again, we also grew comp sales across all day parts. Performance drivers for the quarter included proven value in deals, such as our national two for $5 mix and match promotion, featuring our core menu items, as well as other locally relevant offers. Our renewed focus on our iconic core menu resonates well with our customers. Since switching to fresh beef for our quarter-pound burgers just over a year ago, our sales results and positive customer response confirm it was the right strategic move.
In the H1 of 2019, we sold over 55 million more Quarter Pounder burgers compared to last year. A combination of both deal offers and line extensions featuring bacon and deluxe builds on our classic Quarter Pounder with cheese helped to boost sales. Similar to last quarter, the sales benefit from our modernized EOTF restaurants contributed to our overall U.S. comp performance, which we expect to continue for the remainder of 2019. By taking learnings from completed projects, we've successfully reduced construction downtime, and we're also recovering sales quicker after reopening. During the quarter, we converted an additional 600 restaurants to EOTF, for a total of 1,000 projects completed in the H1 of this year.
We still expect to complete a total of about 2,000 projects for the full year. Strong average check growth from both product mix and pricing continues to fuel our top line in the U.S.
We're seeing success with offerings that increase average check, traffic, and cash flow, such as our current Worldwide Favorites LTO. Returning to guest count growth in the U.S. remains a top priority in the street fight for market share. Turning outside the U.S., strong, balanced results continued across the International Operated Segment, with comp sales up 6.6% for the quarter. Each of the markets within the segment grew comp sales, and nearly all of the markets also grew comp guest counts. Strong results in the U.K., France, and Germany were key contributors to the segment's growth. The U.K. marked its 53rd consecutive quarter of comp sales growth and increased market share versus our competition across all day parts. Maximizing delivery was a key success factor for the market, along with menu innovations such as the bacon roll breakfast sandwich and the Great Taste of America LTO.
France has been successful with both its premium and core burger offerings, balanced with a compelling value platform, helping the market to again achieve record high market share. France now has nine consecutive quarters of both comp sales and guest count growth. Germany is maximizing contributions from EOTF, our core menu, and strong value messages, all of which resonate with their customers. Germany also gained market share versus competitors, and customer satisfaction scores are up. In the International Developmental License Segment, comp sales increased 7.9%, with sales and guest count growth across each geographic region within the segment. Results across our three largest markets drove a strong sales performance, with double-digit growth in Brazil, strong comps in Japan, and positive performance in China. Accelerated new restaurant growth by our strategic partners, primarily in China, led the segment to grow system-wide sales by 10% for the quarter in constant currencies.
I'll turn it back to Steve to further discuss the growth accelerators driving our global business.
Over the past four years, we've seen unprecedented changes in the global consumer landscape. With this proliferation of change, consumers today expect more from us. Quality, service, and convenience are more important than ever, and of course, delicious food served by welcoming people is absolutely essential. The accelerators of our Velocity Growth Plan are all about giving our global customers more control over how they order, how they pay, and how they're served their food. In the U.S., we've made significant progress in modernizing our restaurants through our Experience of the Future initiative. We have now modernized over 8,500 U.S. restaurants. Today, customers are much more likely to visit an EOTF restaurant than they were just a year ago. At the end of May, I was honored to join our team in New York for the opening of our new Times Square restaurant.
Our three-story restaurant is a major brand statement on how we're providing a better customer experience through decor, enhanced customer service, and seamless order and pay technologies. Our major IOM markets have had Experience of the Future for some time, and we're continuing to unlock its potential. For example, in Australia and our major European markets, over 40% of in-store customers now use kiosks when dining with us, taking control of how they order, customize their food, and select how to be served. From New York to Sydney and most places in between, our restaurants are not just ready for the future, they're meeting customers on their terms today. Delivery is another area where we're taking bold action to meet customers' expectations for high-quality food on their terms with increasing demands for convenience and speed.
We've made significant progress on delivery the past two years and have room to grow in a largely untapped market with great upside. Driving customer awareness and trial about McDelivery remains a top priority. Globally, we expect delivery to be a $4 billion business in 2019 for McDonald's and franchise restaurants. Across our major markets, we've maintained double-digit delivery sales growth in restaurants offering the service for more than 12 months. In the U.K. and Spain, delivery now accounts for greater than 10% of sales in restaurants that offer delivery. In the U.S., McDelivery with Uber Eats is now available in more than 9,000 restaurants, which is more than half of all McDonald's U.S. restaurants. We're also continuing to add new partners that allow us to scale and deploy delivery to meet untapped customer demand.
We recently announced a partnership in the U.S. with DoorDash to expand the availability and accessibility for customers to receive our delicious food wherever they are. We will quickly scale with DoorDash across the U.S. to provide customers with a choice of delivery partners. In Canada, we've seen incremental strength in delivery with our second national partner, SkipTheDishes. We offer delivery in 850 restaurants in Canada, many of which offer delivery from both partners. Multiple delivery partners now are also the norm in Italy, Spain, and Russia, where we're learning from our partners whilst driving increased delivery orders. We're also taking bold action on digital. Since closing the Dynamic Yield acquisition in April, we launched the Decision Logic technology on digital menu boards in drive-throughs across multiple regions in the U.S.
Customers have responded to the point-of-sale suggestive selling by adding french fries, drinks, Chicken McNuggets, and other favorites to their orders. We're already seeing an increase in average check by improving our ability to offer customers what they are likely to want, with suggestions based on time of day, weather, and items already in customers' orders. We introduced Dynamic Yield technology in Australia this month and will increase the number of drive-throughs in the U.S. using the technology from about 700 today to over 8,000 in the next two weeks. By year-end, we plan to integrate the technology in nearly 100% of our drive-throughs in both markets. This is another example of using technology to create more engaging experiences for our guests. The technology infrastructure we've built over the past three years to support our Velocity Growth Plan and accelerators is fundamental to our transformation.
It's a reflection of what our customers demand from us, and it's not static. Digital capabilities change by the day and impact what customers ultimately expect from us. The technological ecosystem we're building will enable us to meet these rising expectations, positioning us for new opportunities to elevate and transform the customer experience. Now, I'll turn it back over to Kevin for a look into the financial results for the quarter.
Adjusted earnings per share of $2.05 grew 7% in constant currencies for the quarter when excluding impairment and other strategic charges from both the current and prior years. Our results benefited from strong operating performance for the quarter. Revenue grew 3% in constant currencies as our comp sales growth more than offset the impact of refranchising activity. Adjusted operating margin for the H1 of the year was 43.2%, an increase of 30 basis points versus last year. As a result of our refranchising efforts over the past few years, the largest component of operating income is our franchise margin dollars. With growth of 9% in constant currencies for the quarter, franchise margin dollars now represent nearly 85% of total restaurant margin dollars.
Our consolidated franchise margin percent declined 100 basis points as our strong sales performance was impacted by higher EOTF-related depreciation in the U.S., as well as 70 basis points from the lease accounting presentation change that I discussed last quarter. As a reminder, this presentation change has no effect on our franchise margin dollars, but the impact to our franchise margin percent will be ongoing. Turning to our company-operated restaurants, consolidated margins grew 20 basis points to 18.1% for the quarter. IOM segment company-operated margins were flat versus prior year as our strong sales performance was offset primarily by higher labor and other costs such as delivery commissions. U.S. company-operated margins grew 40 basis points to 16.3%, reflecting strong sales performance and refranchising, partially offset by continued commodity and labor pressures, along with higher EOTF-related depreciation.
Q2 pricing for both the U.S. and the Big Five markets in the IOM segment was up about 2.5%, while commodity costs were up a similar amount across these markets. In the U.S., we expect commodity pressures to ease somewhat in the back half of the year and still expect our grocery basket to be up 2%-3% for the full year. For the Big Five markets in the IOM segment, we expect the full-year commodity cost increase to be up roughly 2.5%. G&A was 2.1% of system-wide sales for the quarter and flat to prior year in constant currencies. We still expect G&A for the full year to remain relatively flat in constant currencies versus last year as we continue to invest in digital and technology capabilities.
Our effective tax rate was 24.5% for the quarter, and we continue to expect a full-year tax rate between 24% and 26%. Foreign currency translation negatively impacted our Q2 results by $0.07 per share, given the strength of the US dollar. At current exchange rates, we expect the foreign currency impact to lessen to $0.02-$0.04 for Q3, with further easing into Q4. Our estimated full-year headwind remains at $0.18-$0.20. As usual, this is directional guidance only because rates will change as we move through the year. Now I'll turn it back to Steve.
I began my remarks this morning by talking about momentum. The momentum we're building is apparent to our customers who seek the convenience and value of McDonald's great-tasting food. It's apparent to our people. It's apparent to industry observers who are watching our transformation. Getting to these results wasn't easy, and we need to continue to work hard to sustain performance as we face macroeconomic and industry uncertainties around the world. We remain confident in our strategies. Customers are rewarding us for the investments we are making to offer them great-tasting food, a modern and hospitable environment, and unparalleled convenience. We all want to be associated with companies, organizations, and brands that engage and inspire us. Brands that are inclusive, fun, relevant, and successful. Brands that strive to improve communities and societies at large.
That's where we're headed as we continue to unlock the potential of the Velocity Growth Plan and its accelerators. It's why you'll see us continue to focus on our innovation and technology pipelines. This is our version of success. We're building a better McDonald's through a culture of innovation focused on a better customer experience, a culture that strives to make the jobs of restaurant employees easier, and a culture that is focused on sustaining long-term growth.
This is our mindset as we push ourselves to execute our Velocity Growth Plan and accelerators with a strong sense of urgency, passion, and commitment. With that, we'll open it up for Q&A.
As a reminder, if you are an investor and would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and re-queue for any additional questions.
Our first question is from Andrew Charles with Cowen.
Great. Thanks. Steve, can you give a little more context to the mixed growth in the U.S. that seems to be accelerating? You know, certainly outperformance outside the lower ticket breakfast occasion, if that's continued, as well as lapping $1 $2 $3 from last year helps, but I think investors are wondering about the endurance of the customer's ability to continue to pay up, absent any growth in traffic. Relatedly, the most tangible driver may be Dynamic Yield as we look forward. In the 700 stores that have added the initiative so far, have you experienced a consistent lift to sales, particularly on mix, once a drive-thru adds the initiative, or have the lift to sales been more varied? Thanks.
Thanks, Andrew. As you say, clearly, this is a check-driven sales comp growth in the U.S. What I think is encouraging for us and gives us confidence that we've got more sustaining platforms is the balance of how that check is built. We're about two-thirds through product mix and one-third through price. I think that's a fairly healthy balance. When you kind of drill into it, I mean, there's a number of elements at play here that's helping with this. If we just look at some of the menu activity and promotional activity through the quarter, for instance, there was a good local co-op initiative, which many of the local co-ops initiated, particularly through the Easter period on the Filet-O-Fish promotion, which gave us an incremental lift.
We've been pleased with the way the Worldwide Favorites promotion has worked, that's meeting or maybe even slightly exceeding our targets, and it's giving us incremental business. As we continue to innovate around the kind of the hot-off-the grill platform, the Quarter Pounder cheese with different options around lettuce and tomato, that also worked. We actually got a nice lift on the Happy Meal business, particularly now we've reestablished a relationship with Disney. I think there's a number of elements through just the menu and marketing piece that have given us, building on platforms that it's taken us a while to invest in or operationally embrace, but it is now beginning to deliver more consistent results.
Also, we're seeing as we convert the EOTF restaurants, we're getting an incremental sales lift from that, some of which will come through growing and increasing use of the self-order kiosk, where we generate higher average checks, as we've mentioned before. Alongside delivery, don't forget delivery, remember, bear in mind, as that becomes a larger part of our business, we're still seeing about twice the average check on the typical delivery order as well. There's a number of contributors. It's not a one single contribution. If you look through right across the business, I think it's the culmination of a lot of projects that we've been investing in the last two or three years are beginning to come together, which is giving us encouragement. On Dynamic Yield, we've been really pleased.
I've got to say, sort of three months in, couldn't be more pleased with the integration of Dynamic Yield, both as a company and as a culture, but also frankly, getting the capabilities into our restaurants. We've been running 700 restaurants now for the best part of two and a half months. We're seeing consistent trends across different day parts, across different days of the week, across those 700. That certainly encouraged us with the support of our own operators, of course, to quite significantly accelerate the rollout. We know the technology works. We can plug it into our existing outdoor digital menu boards. We're going to go from about 800 now to 8,000 by this time in two weeks' time, which is fantastic.
We would expect to see, we have no reason to believe that the kind of lifts we're beginning to see, and I'm not going to go into those details, but the kind of lifts we're seeing at the moment, we would expect to continue across obviously the accelerated rollout. What's also been really encouraging to us, whilst we're on the subject of Dynamic Yield, we've taken it into our first international market and have gone very, very quickly from about 20 restaurants to 150 in Australia. The reason that's important is because, and I don't want to get too much into it, but the content management system, the kind of the brain which holds all the data, which Dynamic Yield product works off to then produce what we can show on the digital menu boards. Internationally, they have one typical content management system, the U.S. has another.
We've been able to prove very, very quickly that the technology works on both platforms, which really indicates this is ready for a global expansion. We'll be careful that we don't get over our skis on it, but the pull from the markets is strong. The excitement from the owner-operators is great. The most probably rewarding or one of the most rewarding announcements as well as the business results is it just makes the managers' and crew life easier in the restaurant as well. Be able to take the process a little quicker because we don't have to sort of manually suggest a sale. The technology does it for you. That was a long answer, but plenty of wide variety of initiatives are helping support that, and not least by the way, just the fact that we're actually running the restaurants better.
The focus we've got on the drive-throughs, which I spoke about the last quarter. We're seeing drive-through times drop in almost all of our major international markets and notably here in the U.S. as well. I can talk maybe more about that later.
Our next question is from David Tarantino with Baird.
Hi, good morning. Steve, I guess while we're on the subject of speed of service, I just wanted to ask, I guess at the opening remarks, you talked about having a philosophy of not focusing on incremental change, but focusing on more step changes in your overall strategies. I'm just wondering if there's something on drive-thru speed that can accelerate the progress you're seeing. It seems like it's been fairly shallow so far, but perhaps I'm mistaken on that. Maybe one clarification at the end. I just wanted to understand the traffic growth or traffic decline in the U.S. in Q2. Did that change from what you saw in Q1 or did it remain around the same level? Thanks.
That's great. Well, let me take the drive-thru one. Once a year, we get our leaders from around the world together, so probably 60, 70 strong, including the managing directors of our top 20 markets. We got together the start of March, and whilst clearly it's been a really strong performance across the last three to four years, there are certain areas where we know we need to do better. We kind of had a white of the eyes conversation at the start of March, and we collectively agreed that we were going to renew some emphasis on the drive-thru service times. They've been going the wrong way in most of our markets for three or four years, for reasons we could understand as we've added more to our business. We knew that wasn't a sustaining trend.
When you talk about progress in the drive-thru, frankly, it will improve. We want to get incremental improvement week to week to week, so that each time a customer comes back, say a week or two later, they can notice a few seconds difference. There's been a ton of things we've done. We've had some centrally led initiatives, but also some market led. All the stuff from some of the menu simplification moves that you would have read about, particularly here in the U.S., where we streamlined the late-night menu, removing of the Signature Crafted, which was slowing down service times, and giving some of the local co-ops a chance to roll back some of the All Day Breakfast rollout, kind of a second phase. Those things just helped smooth the operation in the kitchens.
We also are increasingly introducing technology and diagnostic tools that our managers and crew can see in real-time in the drive-thru lanes. They can basically decompose the various elements of a drive-thru visit for a customer into its constituent seconds. How long are we taking to take the orders? How long are we taking to take the payment? How long it takes us to gather the food and present it? How many cars are we asking to pull forward and then bring the food later? Just with that attention, we're beginning to see notable changes. It clearly kicked off really by the start of this quarter.
Just to give you a slight sense of what we're seeing already, in June, for example, in the U.S., we saw a 15-second reduction year-over-year in service times in the drive-thru, which I would say is more than incremental. I think that's notable. Clearly that's rewarding for customers. It's a smoother journey. It also helps us with throughput as well. There's certainly a lot more to do. I'm really encouraged and there's certain other international markets that are seeing double that type of reduction with the focus they're putting on. There's more to come. Kevin, you may want to talk a little bit to traffic decline.
Yeah. David, regarding guest counts in the U.S. in the Q2. I'd say there wasn't a meaningful change in the underlying guest count trend in the U.S. The actual number for the Q2 was, I'll say, less negative than the Q1, but there were some specific things in the Q2, some of which Steve mentioned earlier. Things like, there was that calendar shift with Easter timing this year versus last year that a little bit benefited the Q2. As Steve talked about, the Filet-O-Fish, we had about 70% of our co-ops that offered a Filet-O-Fish deal in Q2. That helped drive some sales and guest counts. Worldwide Favorites obviously was an LTO that helped the Q2 too. While the actual number was less negative in the Q2, I'd say there really hasn't been a meaningful change in the underlying trend.
Our next question is from Jeff Bernstein with Barclays.
Great. Thank you very much. Just following on that, one clarification, if you could just provide some color on the breakfast side of the business in the U.S. I got the impression last quarter that you were keen to see that breakfast had turned more favorable. I'm wondering if you can talk about whether there was any accelerating momentum in the quarter, where it stands as a percentage of sales, and maybe how breakfast compares to the rest of the day. I just wanted to ask one other thing. Should we expect, Kevin, an update on the return of cash targets as we now finish out 2019? Are we going to get another kind of three-year bucket as we look out to the next few years? How should we think about the outlook for that going forward? Thank you.
Hi, Jeff. I'll take the first one. We did see a better trading performance from the breakfast day part in quarter two. I think the combination of local activity, with the local comp support. We did get to see some strong results out of the McCafé initiatives and the Donut Sticks that we launched in the Q1 as well. On the day part, we grew sales. It was still the slowest growing day part amongst the day, but it was back to a solid sales growth. There is still, as I think we mentioned before, there's plenty of other entrants who are competing in the breakfast market. We don't have it all our own way, the way perhaps we used to back in the day. It remains competitive. We've got sales growth. We're encouraged by that, but we know we've got more work to do.
Regarding our return on cash target, as you know, this year we'll complete our three-year, $25 billion target. We're on track to do that, we'll finish that this year. Later in the year, we'll provide an update as far as what that means going forward past beginning in 2020.
Our next question is from John Glass with Morgan Stanley.
Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Can you update us maybe on the U.S. franchisee relationships? In particular, I think, you slowed down the EOTF rollout in concession to them. Now you're talking about profits for eight months rising. Is there a greater enthusiasm to embrace this, maybe, and pull forward some of the things you talked about in 2021 and 2022 and get it done faster? Can you also talk about maybe where they stand or where you stand on delivery? I think there was some friction around commissions and sort of the economics of that. Have you resolved some of those issues? I think there was some adjustments you may plan to make in the back half. Just what those adjustments to a royalty rent relief associated with that? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, John. As I've said before, 2018 was a really hard work year. Both the owner-operators and the company invested a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money in really kickstarting the Bigger Bolder Vision as the plan they built. That does create tensions at a point in time, and that's natural. We work our way through them. I would say that by easing off the accelerator, the speed of the EOTF gave those owner-operators who wanted a bit of breathing room, were able to select that and push one or two projects out, which gave them a lot more confidence and comfort. That said, the results we're getting from the EOTF rollout are really strong, and they're very similar to what we've seen elsewhere in the world.
You'll find the majority of owner-operators are sticking with the original plan, the accelerated plan, really to complete their businesses by the end of 2020. It will be optional for owner-operators to pull their projects forward if they want to in 2021 and 2022. They're welcome to. We'll be ready for it. I think what it has also given us is, we're a wonderful learning organization as a system. We're always striving and curious to get better, and if we look at the performance of EOTF, just as an example, because you mentioned it, the downtime of the projects were about two to four days better this year than we were in 2018, which clearly helps get the business back on track. The time to recover the sales, as in when you reopen and getting ourselves back up to the levels, that recovery time is quicker.
Also the dip during the closure is a little less this year than it was last year. I think our execution around these 2,000 projects this year is sharper for probably those three elements, which again, builds confidence in the owner-operators that it's going to be a stronger business outcome for them. With delivery, yeah, we are clearly keen to roll this out. The owner-operators know this is a great business opportunity. We have, around the world, worked with our owner-operators in each of our markets to find an arrangement with them as to how we can best take some of the heat out of the commission costs that they face in order to make it encouraging. We want them to make money out of it, and we, as a company, will make money as a result. I think we're in a far better place.
I think probably the two indicators just here in the U.S. that will demonstrate the confidence the owner-operators have is that once we settled on this new rent arrangement with them, I think it was within about a week, they voted on a national marketing campaign with Uber Eats to put marketing dollars behind delivery. The eagerness with which they've embraced a second and third-party operator, being DoorDash. I've mentioned in my opening comments, we've got around 200 restaurants in Houston on DoorDash at the moment. That's just really making sure we can integrate the technology and get the operation right. By the end of August, we're going to have probably two waves of around 4,000-plus restaurants. We'll be up at about 9,000 on DoorDash by the end of August, again, just showing the speed we're going, and hence the owner-operator commitment behind it.
We've got already about 9,000 with our key strategic partner, which is Uber Eats. There's no perfect crossover. There's going to be about an additional 1,200 restaurants that have either one or other, depending on coverage. That means that, yeah, we've got about 8,000, which will have two third-party operators. Yeah, we've seen around the world, that does give us good incremental delivery business. Customers are typically, not solely, but typically loyal to one third-party operator app. We know what we've seen from Canada, where we added SkipTheDishes to the Uber Eats platform. We've also seen it elsewhere around the world, such as in Italy, where we got three, where we got Glovo, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats.
We've got good experience of working with multiple delivery partners, and we're confident the incrementality will come with it, and then as a result, the cash flow to the operators. Ultimately, the mood of the operators, I think, are feeling much more confident. By May of this year, their cash flow growth eclipsed the decline that they saw in 2018. As you can imagine, that gives people a great sense of satisfaction. June continued that. We've now got eight months in a row of cash flow growth. We're confident and committed to maintaining that trend for them because they've committed a lot to this plan. They commit a lot to our business, and we want them to build business wealth and success.
Our next question is from Greg Francfort with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Hey. Yeah, thanks for the question. Just maybe going back to the drive-thru times, can you quantify how much those were up? I guess the question is, how much have you recaptured with the 15 seconds? What percentage of what you have seen in an increase the last few years? How much opportunity do you think there is going forward, and what's the key strategy to address that? Is there changes you have to make on the product front or menu front to capture more time savings? Thank you very much.
I'm not going to get into all the details of drive-thru service. They do differ by country as well, obviously, depending on how busy the drive-thrus are. We've got certain markets in Europe where drive-thru is only about 40% of the business of a drive-thru restaurant, whereas here in the U.S., it can be upwards of 70%, 75%. That creates a totally different service time dynamic. I would say across the major markets, as we sat down in March, we wanted to set ourselves that by the end of the year to be about 30 seconds better, which we knew would be notable enough to be notable to the customer, and also then business-enhancing as it eases up throughput, particularly at those peak service times, obviously. That's the most critical time to do it. There's a number of different initiatives to it. Some is just getting the focus.
Understandably, with the aggressive rollout of Experience of the Future, there was a heightened focus in store front counter dining area. We're just rebalancing that. Some of it is just the focus on the drive-thru, people positioning, making sure we're staffing right, training, and the basics. There are certain things, for example, on menu, I think we've got a far more forensic ability through our global operations team and our innovation center now to analyze the complexity of our menus by market and identify those slower-moving items that really are not contributing much to incremental margin and certainly not selling in many volumes but create barriers to service. I think those diagnostic tools and the forensic tools we have now is providing the information into each of the markets. They can make smart menu decisions. It's not just about the menus.
It's around technology as well, and actually just making it fun. We've had a number of service competitions around all the markets, and particularly now we're giving these tools to the restaurants, to the managers. When I first saw this, the drive-thru timer tools, in Canada probably 12 to 18 months ago, and then saw them rolled out in Europe probably about 12 months ago. They're in the majority of the U.S. drive-thrus now, and probably what captured my attention more than anything else was the enthusiasm the managers and the crew had for that kind of local competition. How are you doing versus the drive-thrus in your area or the drive-thrus in your owner operator group or the drive-thrus of a similar volume to you?
We can use these tools in many ways to, A, identify where the barriers are, but actually just make it fun, incentivize, and get the enthusiasm of the management crew. More to come. I'm encouraged with where we're at. We've got some markets which are actually 30, 40 seconds quicker now, just three or four months in. They've got a bigger opportunity than some, but they're making good headway. The U.S., I'm proud of where the U.S. is at. I know they're focused on getting better than the 15.
Our next question is from Dennis Geiger with UBS.
Great. Thanks for the question. I wanted to ask a bit more about the U.S. guest counts. Maybe if you could just highlight a bit more where you're seeing progress and where the biggest opportunities are to continue to show that improvement. I guess within that context, Steve, I think you've talked in the past about a growth strategy to retain customers, regain customers, and convert casual customers. Any update there you could give specifically on the converting the casual customer, and if that's still how you're thinking about getting that guest count up in the U.S.? Thank you.
Dennis, it's Kevin. I'll take a stab at that, and Steve can chime in. As far as progress or opportunity, I think as we've talked about, certainly one of our biggest opportunities continues to be at breakfast. As Steve talked about, there's been a lot of new entrants into that space. There's not many players that are growing comp guest counts at breakfast or really in most of the dayparts. New entrants have kind of caused a scattering, I'll say, of the existing guest counts along just more units. As far as retain, regain, convert, the convert strategy for us was always around kind of opportunities in either other dayparts or other areas that we didn't have our fair share, if you will.
Areas like coffee and snacking and areas that are potential further growth opportunities, but we're not as strong in some of those areas. It wasn't necessarily taking some of our existing customers and just having them come more frequently. There still are opportunities in some of those areas, again, like coffee and like snacking. I think the way we think about it is there's an opportunity, and this is what kind of one of the purposes of both EOTF and our digital is to take our existing relationship with customers and expand that relationship through digital means, whether that's through apps, a further loyalty program at some point. The whole customer relationship where we can get to know and personalize offers easier and better for existing customers.
That's one of our big opportunities. The U.S. guest counts will continue to be a, we call it a street fight just because it's a very competitive environment here in the U.S. I think, there is more of a focus on what do we need to do in the various day parts. Again, breakfast probably being the biggest opportunity for us to regain some of those guest counts that we lost. It really is about, we call it losing guest counts. It's not losing customers, it's losing customer visits. It's customers that may not be visiting us as often as they were historically. If we can regain some of those additional visits, especially at breakfast time, which is, as you know, a very habitual ritual. If we can get those customers coming again at breakfast time, it would be a huge benefit.
Just to support Kevin's comments, particularly around the, if you like, the technology ecosystem we're building here. For us to have a personalized relationship with our customers, which I think will be valuable to us and also make it valuable to them, we've got to find ways for them to identify themselves when they enter the drive-through without slowing the drive-through process down. Identify themselves at the self-order kiosk. Again, even though there's less pressure on time there, you don't want to slow them down. For example, if they're having home delivery, and when we get to route delivery through the McDonald's app, and we're working with our partner of Uber Eats, we're going to be getting the ability to route those orders through the McDonald's app.
Once we can start to link drive-through transactions to in-store transactions to home delivery, we start to build a really good picture of our customers individually, person by person. I think that will be incredibly valuable for us to make ourselves more relevant and more interesting to those customers and from a customer perspective, just make the experience smoother and more enjoyable. You can expect to hear more. There are certainly some initiatives we work on the markets right now on those. Nothing to say at scale yet, but I can assure you the culture of innovation that we've got going here is playing out. We've got a number of initiatives in a number of our markets where we're learning very quickly how best to identify customers or for customers to choose to identify themselves, is a better way of saying it, at the drive-through, at the in-store.
We believe we got the home delivery piece already initiated. I'm very excited about what that could offer the business.
Our next question is from Jon Tower with Wells Fargo.
Great, thanks. I just wanted to talk quickly on the unit growth. I think today you bumped up your expectations for 2019 to 800 stores net. Over the past two years, you've seen a nice jump in absolute net numbers. Can you discuss whether or not you expect this type of net openings to persist in the future? What's fueling this growth? Are franchisees in new markets seeing better returns than in the past? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Jon, for the question. Couple things. First, related to the, I'll call it slight change in guidance in the outlook section of the release. Really what's driving that net additions number of about 50 higher than it was last quarter is less closings. Our gross openings number for this year will be similar to what we thought it was going to be, but the closings that we originally anticipated at the beginning of the year are a little bit lower. About half of those are in our developmental licensed markets, and about half of them are in the International Operated Markets, half of the change in closings that is. As far as how we think about unit growth, there's still a lot of potential, even in our mature markets. Markets like Canada, France, Italy, Spain, have a lot of opportunity to continue growing new units.
In the U.S. even long term, we believe. What's helpful in the way we've changed our business model is what you actually see is right now, substantially the large portion of openings are in our Developmental Licensed markets, China and the other DL markets, which use their capital. It's a pretty efficient way for us to grow. You should expect to see continued growth in new units, again, both in the DL markets by our partners as well as in our more mature markets that we own, like the ones I spoke about.
Just to add on to that. I just want to give a shout-out to some of the mid-size operated markets. Recently I've been in Italy, Poland, Netherlands. These markets are doing double-digit sales comps on top of double-digit sales comps, hence that's creating clearly significant increase in volumes and throughput in the restaurants, it's putting some capacity pressure on. I can tell you the desire in the markets is to start to pick up the openings a little bit. I'm heading out to Russia in about two months' time to spend some time there with the team. Again, with the strong growth in both guest counts and sales they're seeing, I know they have an ambition for growth.
If you remember, we previously called that segment the high growth segment, and that was because we expected them to grow units at a greater pace than perhaps the more mature markets. We're keeping a real close eye on it, and the stronger we grow the business, then the stronger the confidence level is to grow the units as well. More to come by the end of the year.
Our next question from Brian Bittner with Oppenheimer.
Hi, thanks for the question. Can you guys talk a little bit more about your store-level margins in the U.S.? It's the first time they've expanded in five quarters, and certainly were a much healthier level than all of us analysts were forecasting. I know you said refranchising was a positive impact, Kevin, I think probably a similar impact as you've seen in recent quarters. Are the franchisees seeing a similar margin trend change this quarter? If so, what drove that? Just following up on the EOTF, can you tell us what the net impact you believe EOTF was on comps this quarter and how you expect that to change into the H2? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Let me start with the store-level margins. I guess I'll talk about company-operated margins because obviously those are our restaurants, so I can see a lot of detail related to those. I'd say one of the big differences is, certainly comps in the Q2 were higher than they were, let's say, in the Q1, and obviously higher comps definitely helped that. The other thing I'd say is there's a little bit more stability in the restaurants in 2019 than 2018. Steve talked earlier about the hard work and all the things that we threw at the restaurant in 2018, including EOTF, a lot of projects, fresh beef, the restructure we did in the field. All those changes that impacted the restaurants.
As we've now, I'll say, stabilized the business a little bit and just have less overall initiative deployment, as well as slowing the pace or getting near the end of our refranchising. The restaurants are now able to just focus on running the restaurants as efficiently as possible. We saw more efficiency, labor productivity in the Q2 than we saw in the Q1 and last year. On the franchisee side, we've talked about their cash flow is up, so their unit level economics have been doing well similarly. I think that's probably the biggest change as far as what we're seeing in margins versus last year, certainly.
Related to EOTF, I'd say the benefit in the Q2 was a little higher than it was in the Q1. We would expect that to be relatively similar for the remaining quarters of this year. As we said, we completed about 1,000 projects so far this year of our 2,000 that we'll complete in total. That's coming off of finishing about 4,500 last year. We have a big base of projects that are now complete that we're seeing the benefit of, in addition to improvement in how we're doing those projects, as Steve talked about, less downtime, quicker recovery, et cetera. We expect those EOTF benefits to continue. Obviously as we have completed more projects, that certainly helps future results.
As we near the top of the hour, we'll take one final question from Sara Senatore with Bernstein.
Thank you very much. I just have two quick follow-ups, if I may. The first was on the EOTF and traffic in the U.S. I had been under the impression that last year, part of the issue was during the store closures, you lost some traffic. I would've thought maybe you'd have gotten that back this year, but it sounds like you haven't gotten the traffic back so much as the customers that are still going to McDonald's are just spending more, and EOTF is supporting that. I just wanted to understand the dynamic there between like unlapping the closures. Just on China, are you seeing any cannibalization? We've noticed across the board a lot of restaurants taking up unit growth in China and seeing their comps decelerate accordingly.
Is that something that you have to contemplate, or are you still so under-penetrated it's not really an issue there?
I can start with the EOTF. Related to EOTF, last year, as you mentioned, we had restaurants closed, primarily the ones that had the big projects, what we call non-modernized. The ones where we needed to do a remodel plus the EOTF components. This year, while there's less number of projects being done, there are a higher percentage of those non-mods being done. While we've gotten better at reducing the amount of time that they're closed, we still have some of those closures. That isn't the only issue, obviously, related to traffic, though. To be fair, we were losing traffic before we started the EOTF, and that won't fix all the issues related to traffic. The traffic piece is beyond just EOTF, and as we've gotten better and done more of these EOTF projects, we're getting better at completing those.
That in and of itself won't resolve all of the traffic issues.
Just to pick up on the China question, Sara. We had really strong system-wide sales growth in China for the quarter. Clearly, we've got a rapid pace of expansion of new restaurant openings. We also grew sales and grew guest count in the quarter as well. The core business is robust. I would say probably exceeding the opening plans that we'd initially expected. I think if you look at the five-year period ending 2022, our partners are looking to exceed more than 2,000 openings. They're certainly on track for that at the moment. Having caught up with them recently, they're in a very confident mood about the state of the business. It's incredibly competitive. You've seen the pace at which other people are expanding. It is a huge market.
The emerging middle class, the greater affordability of the mass population there is heading towards Western QSR type of average checks and affordability. It's certainly a market we're excited about. We're very confident about the long-term future there. Really pleased with the way the partners are working out as well. They're doing a terrific job. It'll be more than 400 openings this year after about 400 plus last year as well. If they can keep the sales comps going at the same time, then clearly that indicates a healthy position for the business.
Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Have a good day.
This concludes McDonald's Corporation investor conference call.