Yes and no. Businesses like these succeed and fail at the margins. If McDonalds declines in popularity too much, franchisees start folding and the whole operation could absolutely collapse. All their competitors are looking for ways to exploit areas of weakness, whether it's "value" or "speed" or "quality." Most of the "loyalty" regimes are organized to work on the "value" side of the equation, since the only way a promo (like "free fries" that I received yesterday) has any ROI, is if it's designed in a way to bring in the "right" people who will spend enough money, and to have the way to contact them going forward to bring them back again and again. By contrast, handing out free fries to everyone who walks in the door is not going to be worth the cost.