Hail to the McChef

This will impact McDonald's Owner/Operators for years

in the future - for the past four years all credit goes to
management. Franchisees were just lucky to be along for
the ride.

Check out this Wall Street Journal story about Snack Wraps.

The writer explains that historically McDonald's franchisees
had some involvement in new products but, " Now McDonald's
uses a far more sophisticated system".

All good things - all good ideas - come from Oak Brook.

WSJ article is here

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Breakfast All Day

McDonald's Operators should notice that the Business Week article

mentions management is still looking at serving breakfast all day.

The article mentions the addition of an eclectic grill to accommodate

the change.

I remember adding electric griddles for hotcakes 25 years ago.

Serving breakfast all day wasn't a good idea back then either.

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But it Wasn't Good Enough for the Analysts ...

and the stock had the biggest drop on the Dow Jones industrial average.

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Are Rewrites a Legal Issue?

A poster asked a question on the topic of rewrites:

"Does anyone know if this is even legal?"

McDonald's doesn't care about what's legal. Since

there is so little litigation by franchisees the franchisors

just do what they want with little regard for legalities.

This is the kind of issue that can only be addressed

by an aggressive, proactive group of franchisees.

Do you think McDonald's executives develop

policy based on fairness or the fear of litigation?

Don't count on it.

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Pretending Low Volume Stores Don't Exist

Owner/Operators might be concerned that all of the assumptions

in the 2007 Restaurant Cash Flow Impact Projection are based

on an "Average Volume" restaurant of $2.1 million and states that

"Restaurants with lower sales will see lower cash flow".

No Duh - Problem is that's about 5,000 domestic stores.

Meanwhile the aspirational goal is a $2.5 million average restaurant

volume. That's a wonderful thought but takes needed attention

away from the problems of thousands of lower volume stores.

This kind of planning can lead to: A (Your lower volume stores

bleeding even more cash out of your organization, B) The

elimination of the remaining one and two store Operators.

Please review the Executive Summary of the projection.

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Rewrites? Well Maybe Not

Here's one to ask the NLC to address.

Operators who have restaurants under consideration
for rewrite this year (expiring in 2010) are getting
letters from National Franchising asking a series
of questions about their involvement in other
business ventures.

This is meant to:

A) Perpetuate the myth that Operators can't own
other businesses

B) Gain corporate control over every aspect of the
Operator's personal and business life

C) Deny as many rewrites as possible.

This is a great topic for the "comments" function
of the weblog.

Anyone got any thoughts?

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Jim Skinner Flips McDonald's ... All By Himself

On Friday The Wall Street Journal ran an unusually softball
interview with Jim Skinner. Not much new here - it's pretty
sophomoric.

As usual there is no mention of the hard work of McDonald's
franchisees, or their investment. All the credit goes to
the corporate guys.

< Cattle Network Reprints the Article Here >

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