Coalition of Franchisee Associations

April 6, 2023

Are Service Fees to be Reduced?

McDonald's closing field offices in the U.S. - moves to national model

26 comments:

Anonymous said...


Guess COOP Meetings will be packed, as the Owner/Operators will be paying the bill for all the meeting spaces. How do we start a wave to remove the self-serving Board of Directors that are encouraging this insanity. The Board that works to promote there own agendas to include, Harvard University, Kraft Foods, Deloitte and the ever so evil McKinsey Group. Even a Board Member that Disney shuffled out. We have a CEO with such a vast history with McDonald's with such a vast history of 8 years of experience, taking apart a brand with sixty eight years of success. Joe E. The puppet man stated working together with the three legged stool. There is only one leg left for this leadership group and the are pounding it where is should not be. Trying to keep it professional Richard :-)

Anonymous said...

Shareholders love Chris K!

Anonymous said...

We have been here before, with bad results.

Anonymous said...

BOYCOTT LAS VEGAS MEETING.

Anonymous said...

Wall Street Journal has CONFIRMED that McKinsey was involved in the latest cuts and layoffs.

Richard Adams said...

Does McKinsey have any interaction with the Owner/Operator community?
.

Anonymous said...

your service fees are going to pay McKinsey consultants on how to guide McDonald's on how to cut services to the franchisees; do I have that correct?

Anonymous said...

Yes to the above

Anonymous said...

Dont forget the part of the service fees that go to pay the accidental CEO his $20 million annual pay.

Anonymous said...

An Owner’s Lament—A View from the Front Row Seats of Recent Developments That is Surreal to those of us Who Grew Up in the McDonald’s System.

An Undeniable Narrative: "Death of an Industry Leading Culture/Legacy" via six Years of Policies, from “Partners and Collaboration", to "Command & Control”. Or, ”Your Opinion Doesn't Have a Home Any Longer!".

Who will lead? Who will tell the "rest of the story" and add up the list to reverse engineer the success of a 3-Legged Stool Created by the Pioneering Founders?

The Final Chapter of McDonald’s has been written as another sham corporate power grab. The Most Recent Degrading Management Action:
The "Death of An Industry Leading Corporate Partnership Culture, by removing Major Incentives of Long-Term Equity, Assurances of Long-Term Relationship and If You Deliver, You Grow w/out automatic Built-In Legal Impediments:

The "Triggering Event". Corp Announcements w/out Owner Input--Ending the Historical Cooperative Legacy that Set McD's Apart:

Anonymous said...

The McDonald’s Board should have made wholesale changes after the series of:
· Foodservice Basic Industry mistakes,
· Brand embarrassments of major proportions starting with both recent CEO’s,
· Non-existent or incomplete material internal investigations (Easterbrook violations, CK multiple errors in judgment and inability to express the brand values publicly)
· Incalculable damage to the brand through behaviors as above, business mistakes self-inflicted, mistreatment of corporate employees (series of legal actions and losses) Owner/Operators (immeasurable stories and the continued of Franchisee Flight setting records due to relationship mismanagement of some of the finest leaders.)
· Decisions that will light the last restaurant employees and owners torch for leaving the restaurants to others with less bureaucracy, ill-timed requirements (QTB, SBO's) and grading (PACE) that has already lost Owner’s best managers, supervisors and upcoming stars…now flowing to competitors providing similar wages without the nightmare of a corporation lost in its own bureaucracy.

THE PARTNERSHIP IS DEAD

Anonymous said...

after all the abuse of owners the last 6+ years it is obvious to everyone, MCD is untrustworthy, (as if they were trustworthy in past half-decade). Owners are beyond patient and resent the Owner NFLA leadership repeatedly believing the same people, functions, and promises that have been rife with lies for more than six years. What is preventing Owner Leaders from calling it like it is ?
The purpose and timing in which the communications were released is the most disappointing and unfortunate piece of the announcement leaving us blindsided. (Stated by NFLA more times than Owners can count, since BBV, Pandemic lies on abatement, Tech Fee distortions, PACE/Grading untimely, unfettered exploitation of Owner leaders that have caved, out of exhaustion, or other intimidation, and less scrupulous(self serving)accusations.)

Anonymous said...

NFLA=toothless

Anonymous said...

Disagree "NFLA=toothless" This is new NFLA leadership 100 days in and trying hard to express and represent O/O issues. But when we have leadership that will not listen or could care less about O/O input we have problems.

Anonymous said...


Step 1 is to boycott Vegas

Anonymous said...

QUICK
step 2 - 3 - 4 - 10 - 100 BOYCOTT VEGAS

1. the McKINSEY book / someone smarter
than me needs to find the DECK they gave
MCD - like all state

2. not sure Richard will post this -
HOWEVER - a few years ago HOWDEY
made the stupid comment about the
Chicago child being shot & blamed
the parent - he got a lot of push back
& later said / something like MY CHILDREN
SAID THAT WAS A BAD IDEA DAD !!!!!!
REMEMBER THAT 🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴

well years later with this layoff / firing
💩💩 I wonder what his kids think of
this - he brought them up - just want
to know what they are telling him

LAST - maybe I am not the brightest
operator - but like MCD - if I asked my
TEAM to work for less money to stay
with me / they would 😀😀 at me

article says employees are doing this

get rid of C & J & look how much they
could save. I am so 🤬🤬🤬🤬OFF
they do not even need there names
mentioned

HAPPY EARTER TO ALL THE OPERATORS
THAT BUILT THE SYSTEM & TO THOSE
THAT ARE STILL INVOLVED

PS - I would leave but I owe to much
money - 2-3 years unless I **** up
some PACE visits

GOD BLESS YOU & YOURS

Anonymous said...


I agree with everyone stating Boycott Vegas. Why pay to listen to self-serving inexperienced company employees try and pitch the Public Relations Marketing type presentations to us. Chris K has handed walking papers to all the experienced staff, to allow his bunch of woke skinny jean liberals to direct to our experienced Owner/Operator Community. McKinsey has their seat on the Board of Directors, Margaret Georgiadis partner in McKinsey and to think just like Chris K Harvard Business Grad. When your read Wikipedia she did such a great job at Mattel cutting their staff and achieving the wonderful result in a 50% decline of their stock price during her year as CEO. Her ability to change positions of leadership so often, many of us pass on hiring as she changes jobs too often. Yeah McKinsey, goodbye to employees.

Anonymous said...

McKinsey & Co. also gave us the best, most qualified US Secretary of Transportation in history: Mayor Pete! Their talent is unsurpassed.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Disagree "NFLA=toothless" This is new NFLA leadership 100 days in and trying hard to express and represent O/O issues. But when we have leadership that will not listen or could care less about O/O input we have problems.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It is certainly your right to disagree, but consider this- NFLA meeting on 3/28 with MCD Board, the two NFLA reps came out all starry eyed and impressed. In the next two days, Joe E made draconian comments such as "we have to rebalance the risk reward relationship if Joint Employer passes" (raise fees), and cancelling the DC GR conference because they were afraid that operators would reveal the dirty laundry to lawmakers and the press. Not one promise was made to the NFLA, and several negative comments and events followed, yet on the last NFLA call the two reps were still starry eyed and bamboozled by their meeting. This has been going on for years, and it never yields good results. The NFLA is toothless. MCD pays their bills, they are not independent!

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!

Anonymous said...



Margaret H. Georgiadis

Nationality American
Alma mater Harvard College
Harvard Business School
Margaret "Margo" Georgiadis is an American business executive who is the former president and chief executive officer of Ancestry.com for the years 2018 to 2020.

Education and career
Georgiadis earned a BA in economics magna cum laude from Harvard College, where she was also Phi Beta Kappa. Upon graduating in 1986, she worked at McKinsey & Company, where she was a business analyst for two years before returning to Harvard to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1990,[1] where she was a Baker Scholar, meaning she was in the top 5% of her class.[2] In 1990 she rejoined McKinsey, where she was eventually promoted to partner.[3]

From 2004 to 2008, she worked as EVP of Card Products and CMO for Discover Financial, where she played a key role in taking the company public, managing consumer and business credit cards, its online business, and corporate marketing. Her impact at the firm transformed it from three years of receivables declines, culminating in a sustained 4%+ of receivables growth and top industry margins with sales increasing more than 25% to $93 billion.[4] In 2009, she served as a Principal at Synetro Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm.[1]

From 2009 to 2011 she was Google's VP of Global Sales Operations. From April to September 2011, she served as Groupon's COO for a five-month stint,[5] during which Groupon filed a Form S-1 in anticipation of its IPO.[6][7] In 2011, she returned to Google to serve as its President of the Americas, leading the company's commercial operations and advertising sales in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

In February 2017, Georgiadis succeeded Christopher A. Sinclair as Mattel's CEO.[8] She was selected to lead the company in the hope of bringing "a fresh perspective on enterprise alignment and a female voice at the helm does reinvigorate the potential for a dramatic modernization of the Mattel operating model".[9] Her strategy was to focus on Mattel's marquee brands such as Barbie, American Girl, and Hot Wheels while overhauling management, suspending its dividend, and developing plans to cut $650 million in costs.[10] At the time of her departure, Mattel stock had gone down 50% since she became CEO.[11] Ynon Kreiz was appointed as Mattel's new CEO following her departure.[12]

On April 19, 2018, Margaret Georgiadis was appointed president and CEO of Ancestry.com, allowing interim CEO Howard Hochhauser to return to his CFO and COO roles.[13]

In 2020 Georgiadis announced she would be stepping down as Ancestry's President at the end of 2020. [14]

She serves on the board of directors at McDonald's in addition to Ancestry.com.

Richard Adams said...

For better or worse, the above was copied from Wikipedia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Georgiadis
.

Anonymous said...

The GR team was also fired in part because of the Arkansas state bil proposed by MCD owners that fought the ability go MCD to prevent MCD owners from passing their business on to their kids. MCD brought our cannons to kill that bill and screw its franchise owners.

It fired the GR team because they couldn't kill it before it got 54 sponsors (44 of them Republicans) MCD management killed that bill that would prevent them from stealing your business and selling it to someone else (with them keeping the money, you keeping whatever debt that you have)

Don't forget this and join NOA!

Anonymous said...

we need a bigger boycott then just the dozens I have read or heard
we need hundreds & hundreds to protest
HE & the other are not my leaders & definitely do not share my / our
values

I / WE are not done yet - do not - do not. do not - DO NOT
send your TEAM to VEGAS either - to listen to
to the lies they will be telling about our BRAND

talk with your friends about this - even talk with operators than you
MIGHT not always talk with - STAND UNITED OR STAND BY YOURSELF
they are trying to separate us

look what they did this week - terminate
by ZOOM ????????? unbelievable
take a pay cut & stay on COME ON MAN
(JOE BIDEN)

DONE EXCEPT 100’s OF OPERATORS
STAY STRONG & STAY HOME & 1000’s
OF YOUR TEAM STAY HOME

we all know MCD monitors this sight
pass this on to your very sad leaders you
have

HAPPY EASTER


Anonymous said...

Service fees are no longer a cost of business, but a profit center to drive stock price... as are technology and other fees.

Anonymous said...

Hell no, they’re not lowering service charges. They’re much more likely to change the name to “royalty” because that’s what they are now.

Speaking of “hell”…how about McDonald’s leading the efforts to sue Tyson and the rest of them for price fixing. McDonald’s lead the charge…for us? Hell, no.

They sent us an email or two with limited information and big words, apparently there was an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, so they volunteered to look out for our best interests and those of our suppliers like or distribution centers etc.

Did our service fees pay for that? Did our service fees cover the internal corporate legal team that handled this? Did our service fees pay for them to hire outside council to represent us? Hell, no…within those correspondence sent a couple of years ago they cleverly obfuscated what was happening with big words and difficult to understand language, making it sound incredibly complex (and it might have been, who knows?). They offered their services to work on our behalf and to recover any money that we were overcharged as a result of whatever happened.

They also slid into their complex and last-minute offer the fact that they’d not only pay for outside council from the money that was due to us but they’d reimburse themselves fees charged by the corporate legal department that we already pay for and that they, at their SOLE DISCRETION would determine what we’d end up receiving.

Translation: Our owner-operators and suppliers were victims of price fixing and/or fraud and tens or hundreds of million dollars were likely due to owners and suppliers. McDonald’s offered to help and help they did…they never would have gotten involved had they not determined that a huge windfall was likely, so they used our service fee paid legal teams to jump in and they love us so much that they made us reimburse them out of money due to all of us for both outside council and reimburse them for our legal team’s fees that we already pay for with absolutely ZERO transparency, no disclosure of calculations, no way for anyone else to look over their shoulder, making it impossible to verify what they took out of the settlements for themselves.

So hell no they’re not lowering anything. They’re in the business of dilution by adding new stores, cutting their G&A and finding ways to take more of our income and equity every single day.

In fact Joe has threatened to “rethink” our arrangement TWICE in about a month. He said it right out loud and directly to us.

This is clearly a healthy relationship and dynamic, right?

Anonymous said...

When it comes to the service fee conversation, one thing that will never rest easy with me is service fees being paid, without any modification through COVID. McDoanlds continues to provide less service year over year and during COVID they were completely MIA. Yet Operators paid the full fee, irrespective if it was deferred. McDonalds made a lot of money during COVID and it didn't cost them a dime. I don't know if others feel this is an injustice or what if anything could be done. Instead of the roughly $600 a store from this Anti Trust lawsuit (which certainly has its issues surrounding it), the bigger conversation is all the dollars Owners paid for service fees at a time where McDonalds provided literally none.