McDonald’s turnaround plan: Where’s the beef?

McDonald’s, whose U.S. sales have fallen in the last two years as a new generation of Americans shun their parents’ fast-food favorite, unveiled a bold, global turnaround plan Monday morning — and investors aren’t too impressed.

Shares of the $93 billion Oak Brook, Ill., company were off 1.3 percent in early Monday trading, to $96.50.

The plan laid out by CEO Steve Easterbrook was heavy on management restructuring, cost-cutting and strengthening McDonald’s “effectiveness and efficiency to drive faster and more customer-led decisions,” according to a statement put out by the company.

But nowhere in the 1,100-word release does McDonald’s mention the word food.

Sure, Easterbrook touches on delivering “a stronger menu” and improving the “experience for our customers,” but it is the quality and variety of its food — and the growth of rivals more focused on those two points — that has drained U.S. revenue and sparked unrest on Wall Street, where McDonald’s shares are down 3.6 percent over the past 12 months versus a 12.1 percent gain for the S&P 500.

“The reality is our recent performance has been poor,” Easterbrook said in an accompanying video release. “The numbers don’t lie.”

They certainly don’t. But until Easterbrook changes what is on the menu — and the company has paid little more than lip service to this problems in recent years — it will be hard to turn around the company, whose 36,258 restaurants as of Dec. 31 make it more like a lumbering aircraft carrier than a nimble speed boat.