Ian Borden
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at McDonald's
Thanks, Chris.
The first quarter of 2023 was yet another demonstration of McDonald's at its best. We entered the year with global momentum, and remained laser-focused on executing against our strategic growth pillars. Though challenging macro dynamics are still evident across many parts of the world, each of our segments, and our global comp sales grew nearly 13% for the quarter. This demonstrates that no matter the operating environment, our customers continue to rely on McDonald's as an affordable destination, for the delicious food they love, delivered with the great service that they expect.
Throughout the quarter, we showcased our iconic core menu equities, while further scaling emerging equities across markets. I'll share a couple of examples of this in our chicken portfolio, where we continue to expand and grow market share in an area where there is strong opportunity for growth. The U.S. leveraged learnings from the U.K., Canada, and Germany by relaunching its crispy chicken sandwich under the McCrispy global equity umbrella. While there was no change to the core product, compelling creative, along with a new flavor offering, supported demand, and helped drive double-digit sales growth in the market. In fact, we now offer the McCrispy in 10 of our largest markets around the world, adding to our portfolio of billion-dollar brands.
Another example was in China, where in March, we featured the McSpicy chicken sandwich through a creative campaign that included a partnership with a popular streetwear brand, tapping into local cultural relevance. The campaign generated significant social buzz and increased brand relevancy with a younger generation. It's worth noting that China and Hong Kong originally introduced customers to McSpicy nearly 20 years ago, and it's now part of our core menu in 17 markets, reflecting consumers' growing preference for spicy, across the globe.
And while I'm on the topic of China, I want to point out that we saw a steady recovery in the market, with China posting positive comp sales growth for the quarter. Chicken was also critical to Canada's strong results, with the successful execution of the Chicken Big Mac promotion, a popular limited offering that had significant success in the U.K. last year.
By creating these fresh takes on our classic menu items, we've continued to build affinity, and have consistently gained share across our top markets in the growing chicken category over the last two years. In parallel, we continue to maintain our market share leadership in beef, making our core menu offerings even better through enhanced cooking procedures, and other slight changes such as improved buns.
Now in over 50 markets around the globe, these improvements are resulting in hotter, juicier, and tastier burgers. We're seeing improved taste perception scores across markets, giving customers yet another reason to eat at McDonald's. We recently began to introduce these changes to our U.S. customers through a rolling deployment, and the initial reaction has been positive. The Big Mac was also prominently featured across many markets this quarter with strong activations in both Canada and France. While each campaign came to life in its own way, the resulting lift in beef sales across both markets shows that this iconic menu item, which became popular more than 50 years ago, still resonates with consumers today.
As I've mentioned before, rising costs continue to pressure consumer spending across markets. Our ability to meet customer needs in challenging times, makes McDonald's value proposition even more important to highlight. In Germany, for example, the launch of the new McSmart menu, refreshed our everyday value bundles, providing smaller, more affordable meals to our consumers, and contributing to Germany's eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit comp sales growth. Our marketing excellence was also on full display during the quarter, demonstrating our position as an affordable destination, with iconic equities and strong execution.
The Raise Your Arches campaign in the U.K. was a prime example of our marketing excellence in action, bringing to life the true power of the McDonald's brand in a new and unique way. This campaign did not feature our food or our restaurants, yet by illustrating a simple gesture, the raising of eyebrows, our customers instantly recognized the semblance of the Golden Arches, and the engagement was remarkable. In fact, within the first weekend alone, Raise Your Arches reached millions of people, and our customers reacted on social media more than 30,000 times. As the campaign quickly scaled to more than 30 markets across the globe, Raise Your Arches drove brand affinity around the world, and once again proved the true power of the McDonald's brand. This is an example of how one singular idea can drive impact when shared across our markets. This is the one McDonald's way that Chris mentioned earlier.
My McDonald's Rewards is yet another example of how we've tapped into our marketing engine to deploy our loyalty platform throughout the system. Now in 50 markets, loyalty is building even stronger relationships with our customers, and the results continue to shine. In our Top 6 markets, digital sales now represent almost 40% of system-wide sales or nearly $7.5 billion, growth of more than 30% over the last year. We have nearly 50 million 90-day active members across these top markets, and our relationship with them continues to grow. We're learning when they visit, how they visit, and what they buy, with more and more of our sales coming through identified channels than ever before.
We're also continuing to improve our customers' mobile app experience, with new initiatives that provide a more seamless interaction. The U.S. market, for example, is piloting a new way of ordering through our app. Using existing location data, it allows our crew to start assembling a customer's order, prior to their arrival at the restaurant, ultimately delivering hot, fresh food when customers arrive to pick up their order. While it's still early days deploying this new digital enhancement, initial results are already pointing to improved service times and elevated customer satisfaction scores. Australia and Canada enhanced the digital customer experience by officially integrating the ability to order and pay for McDelivery, all within the McDonald's app. This not only brings added choice and convenience for our customers, but also allows them to earn loyalty points, while they enjoy McDelivery at their doorstep, and ensures that we maintain that direct connection. Across our digital and marketing initiatives, McDonald's continues to put the customer at the center of our strategy, driving top line growth and further strengthening the brand.
Turning to the P&L, strong sales performance across each of our segments drove adjusted earnings per share of $2.63 for the quarter, an increase over the prior year of nearly 20% in constant currencies. This excludes restructuring charges of about $180 million, primarily consisting of employee termination benefits and lease termination costs, as we look to become faster, more innovative, and more efficient as part of Accelerating the Organization.
Our company-operated margins remained hampered this quarter by continued pressure from elevated commodities and wages. As we look to the remainder of the year, consistent with the expectations we communicated in January, we expect macro headwinds will continue, with the potential for a recessionary environment across both the U.S. and Europe.
Total restaurant margin dollars grew by over $375 million in constant currencies, or more than 10% for the quarter, driven by higher franchise margin dollars. One of the benefits of our franchise business model is the predictability and stability of our franchise margins, particularly in a strong comp sales environment. As expected, strong franchise sales performance across our markets was offset by increased franchisee assistance, as elevated cost inflation continued to put significant pressure on restaurant cash flows, particularly for our European franchisees. As I've mentioned before, we're providing targeted and temporary support, investing proactively to maintain focus on driving long-term growth during this challenging time. We still anticipate these efforts will have an impact of between $100 million to $150 million for the year.
G&A for the quarter decreased slightly, primarily driven by prior-year costs incurred for our worldwide convention last April, and our adjusted effective tax rate was nearly 21% for the quarter. Adjusted operating margin was 46% for the first quarter, a reflection of the strong top line growth. As we've said before, we expect to gain leverage on operating margin over time, and while this will not necessarily be linear, based on a strong start to the year, we're pleased with our operating efficiency in quarter one.
Based on current exchange rates, we expect foreign exchange to reduce both the second quarter, and full year earnings per share by about $0.03 to $0.05. As always, this is directional guidance only, as rates will likely change as we move through the year.
Despite the economic uncertainty that may persist, we are well positioned with the unique strength and scale that only the McDonald's system can provide. As Chris talked about upfront, we are focused on how we can even further leverage this advantage in the future. With our strong underlying momentum and aligned focus on the right strategies moving forward, I remain confident that we will continue to deliver long-term growth for our system and for our shareholders.
And with that, let me turn it back over to Chris.
