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Southern California was a convenient place to experiment with the early McDonald's/Disney "alliance" attempts, so I've seen this evolution as an Owner/Operator, a consumer, and an observer. Historically, Disney was the dominant party in the McDonald's relationship, but that appears to be changing. Disney is a broken company and now needs to piggyback on other brands to correct course if it can be corrected. Professor Turley says:
Whenever McDonald's Corp. is burdened by a management team that's never run restaurants said management team has to pretend to be "restauranteurs" and venture outside the hamburger business into something more modern or trendy. Rember Boston Market, Donatos, Pret a Manger?
Actually, the launch of McCafe was supposed to result in the opening of a national chain of trendy coffee shops to compete directly with Starbucks. At the time, Starbucks was the darling of Wall Street, and Howard Schultz could do no wrong. If McDonald's management wasn't thinking this way, I can assure you that McDonald's investors envisioned such a chain; instead, they got bags of coffee in grocery stores.
McDonald's investors assume that just because someone achieves the rank of McDonald's CEO, that person is a skilled and experienced restaurant operator, not just a corporate bureaucrat.
"Over the past year, Erlinger has sold a total of 26,922 shares and has not made any purchases. This pattern of selling could suggest that the insider is adjusting his personal investment portfolio or possibly that he perceives the stock to be fully valued at current levels." - Yahoo Finance
Unionized Starbucks employees want to dictate promotional activity. Got me thinking. What if unionized employees in a franchised restaurant chain wanted to call the shots on system procedures. What if the union decided that cooking temperatures were too high for a particular product or station, making the employees perspire a little? Or the service time criteria are onerous, and employees should be allowed to slow down and reduce their stress level?
Most franchise system procedures are developed by corporate with franchisee input over time, not by a few employees on social media discussing what changes they'd like to make.
Union wants Starbucks to suspend digital sales - Restaurant Business
McKinsey and Company recruiting video
My favorite is when the fellow says, "The best part of my Harvard education was the look on people's faces when I said, I go to Harvard!"
These bankruptcy stories are interesting because they are usually about large franchisees, and these large franchisees often operate multiple brands of restaurants or other businesses.
As I’ve said ad nauseam, one of the reasons McDonald’s grew to be the industry leader is the fact that, as soon as they could afford it, the founders focused on smaller one, two, and three store Operators. While recent managements have drifted away from this approach, the McDonald’s structure is still an advantage over these competitors with less disciplined approaches to franchising.
When a big franchisee gets in trouble, there are fewer options than a smaller operator. How does a 100-store franchisee find a buyer? Typically, the corporate side doesn't have the cash to bail them out. Gone are the days when corporate was eager to grow their number of company stores by buying out franchisees.
Now that McDonald’s is favoring larger Owner/Operators, when will they allow McDonald’s franchisees to own franchises in other chains?
Fast Company studies recent bankruptcies in the QSR industry
This is a terrific advertising production but undoubtedly very, very expensive. This kind of thing wins awards and acccoldeds from the advertising industry, but is it a good investment of the Owner/Operator's ad budget?
McDonald's Christmas commercial from the United Kingdom
This YouTube link is the full 90-second version. There is a 60-second version available, but it's not nearly as entertaining. I hope there's not a 30-second version 'cause that would really ruin it.
Nothing really new here except this article does a good job of explaining the problems and challenges.
