I'd say it's long-term thinking. McD's is a franchise, and paying commercial rents at the levels they're at now is not economically viable in a lot of cities, especially if your walk-in traffic is mostly delivery service workers.
They'd probably make more money if they moved spaces into a ghost kitchen and cut out walk-in traffic entirely.
Where I live, there is tons of empty retail space because of Amazon, eBay, etc. I would assume that would push commercial rents down, but I evidently don’t understand that market at all.
I'm thinking about fast food locations in cities, not suburban strip malls and stuff. We expect Starbucks for example to have nice locations in high-rent downtown areas, but I always see McD's not far away from there too.
They'd probably make more money if they moved spaces into a ghost kitchen and cut out walk-in traffic entirely.