McDonald’s Franchisees: “We Will Continue to Fall and Fail”

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/s/mcdonalds/search.html?page=1&thumb_size=mosaic&inline=218791213">Ratana21</a>/Shuttershock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


McDonald’s opened its first franchise in Des Plaines, Ill., 60 years ago today, but its franchisees aren’t exactly celebrating.

“The future looks very bleak. I’m selling my McDonald’s stock,” one operator wrote in response to a recent survey of McDonald’s franchises across the country, as quoted by Business Insider. “The morale of franchisees is at its lowest level ever.”

“McDonalds’ system is broken,” wrote one franchisee.

“McDonalds’ system is broken,” another wrote, according to MarketWatch. “We will continue to fall and fail.”

Is the fast-food giant having a mid-life crisis?

McDonald’s has some 3,000 franchises in the United States, and 32 of them—representing 215 restaurants—took part in the latest survey by Wall Street analyst Mark Kalinowski of Janney Capital Markets. Many of them complained about poor business this year and blamed corporate executives. When asked to assess their six-month business outlook on a scale of 1 to 5, they responded grimly with an average of 1.81. Maybe that’s because, according to the survey, same-store sales for franchises declined 3.7 percent in March and 4 percent in February.

Only three of the 32 franchisees said they had a “good” relationship with their franchisor, while about half described their relationship as “poor.” The average score for this question was 1.48 out of 5, the lowest score since Kalinowski first started surveying the franchisees more than a decade ago.

Reuters reported that a McDonald’s spokesperson responded to the survey by noting the poll size and saying that the company appreciates feedback from franchisees and has a “solid working relationship with them.”

Last month, McDonald’s executives invited franchisees to a “Turnaround Summit” in Las Vegas, to address its US sales decline. But the get-together didn’t seem to boost anyone’s spirits. “The Turnaround Summit was a farce,” one franchisee wrote in the survey, as quoted by AdAge. “McDonald’s Corp. has panicked and jumped the shark.” Another added, “McDonald’s management does not know what we want to be.”

Some franchise operators slammed McDonalds’ decision to raise pay by giving employees at company-owned stores $1 an hour above minimum wage. “We will be expected to do the same,” one wrote, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. “Watch for $5 Big Macs, etc. and Extra Value Meals in the $8 to $10 range.”

Next week, McDonald’s is set to report its first-quarter earnings.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate