McDonald's UK & Ireland CEO | Interns, New Menu & British Food

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0:34So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Today we're joined by Lauren Schultz, the UK and Ireland CEO of McDonald's. Now she's been in post for nine months, having moved across from America, having done lots of different roles there. So we spoke to her about how she's found the transition into the UK, what she makes of British food, etc. But more importantly, we have also discussed with her what McDonald's are planning to do for young people in the United Kingdom, launching their new work experience placement.

1:17As many of you will know who've listened to the show for a long time, McDonald's have been a big backer of ours, supporting episodes with Pat McFadden. and also we did a big video documentary with them last year as well. So we are huge fans of what they do because they employ almost 100 ,000 people under the age of 25 in the UK. And my favourite fact at the moment is that sometimes British politics is talked about for being dominated by Oxbridge elites. Well, since Zach Polanski's victory as leader of the Green Party last year, There are now more political leaders who've worked at McDonald's than have attended Oxbridge, with Kemi Badenock also having famously worked there as well.

2:00So it shows what a launchpad it can be for a political career as well. So thanks very much to McDonald's for all their support, and we hope you enjoy this episode. Lauren, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Hi, Jimmy. It's good to be here. Delighted to be here in your HQ, which also includes a McDonald's restaurant as well. It does. How cool is that? It's very cool, especially for our employees that get free meals here every day. When I was researching for this podcast, I did actually sit in a McDonald's and go to one quite regularly. And it is fascinating how busy they are at all times of the day.

2:39But what are the peaks as you see it? Well, we have a breakfast peak, generally between 7 and 9 a.m. Big lunch peak between 11 and 1.32 p.m. Yeah. Littler snack peak. We're trying to build that peak. And then dinner peak and another area we're trying to build is late night. Okay. So what's the snack peak then? That's quite interesting. Things that are on our savor menu are very popular at that time. Things like our small burgers and small chicken sandwiches and add-on nuggets. Mini McFlurries are actually up a lot right now. so that's been a popular item for snack period and we're trying to keep building our beverage business as well and what's your what is your go-to breakfast meal?

3:26I am a classic egg McMuffin fan and they are particularly good in the UK and Ireland because they're 100 % sourced from the cheese to the muffin to the egg to the butter on them from UK and Irish farmers So you've been here how many months now as the UK? I am on my eighth month, almost to the day. Almost to the day. So what is the first eight months like as the McDonald's UK and Ireland CEO? It has been fun and fast and very impactful. I've really enjoyed getting to know my team, the franchisees, the suppliers, and get our business humming in the right direction. So what does like the first 100 days, you can tell I'm coming at it from a politician's background here, right?

4:23The focus on the 100 days. Like, what do you do in those first 100 days as a kind of CEO? Coming to a new country, et cetera. We should say you've been at McDonald's for a long time before as well, right? I'm wearing my 15-year pin, actually. 15-year pin. It's actually 17 years now, but every five years you get a new pin. Oh, do you? Each year there's like a little bit more of a bedazzle to it. Very good. Okay. And what was your role before becoming the UK CEO? I was a field vice president in Columbus, Ohio, which is a region that spans about seven states in the coal belt of the country. Okay.

5:04Not quite Midwest. We're in between the Chicago area and the Northeast. And so... You were saying first 90 days, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? So what did you do when you came in? Do you go and visit lots of different places, et cetera? How do you kind of feel for it? First of all, because I know you are trying to build the careers and ambitions of people that are in the workforce. I would recommend the book, First 90 Days. Every time I've taken on a new role recently, I've read that book again. It's got all kinds of dog ears and underlines attached to it. So I've built 90-day plans, 100-day plans, based on some of the guidance in that book.

5:45And I think that first 30 days is all about listening, learning, understanding the context. What is exactly that starting point? So you can start to build, prioritize plans about where you need to take that market. I would say the next 30 and then 60 days is a lot about going out and taking that plan that you're building and starting to get the trust and credibility and ambassadorship within the community. So I did visit in total, I think, about 50 restaurants in my first six months on the job. And that first 90 days, probably 30 restaurants. Spoke with all of our leadership franchisees. And I think I was out with about 30 franchisees in the field.

6:37Starting to meet our suppliers and being in meeting rooms and roundtables with them. And of course, getting to know the staff and the teams and what people do. and making sure they knew where the vision was, what the plan was, and we were getting work systemized so people were getting the most out of their jobs. And McDonald's has been in the UK now for 50 years, right? So how do you kind of like refresh something like that? How do you come in and what's the sort of brief of your job? Yeah, we are a timeless brand. And I think that presents so many great opportunities to hearken on the nostalgia, those early memories with our business and our brand.

7:16But it is a balance of kind of the past looking and the forward looking of our brand. And you can see even in this restaurant today how modern we are with digital menu boards and kiosks and things being on the app, whether it's loyalty or we now have ready on arrival. So you can plug your order in before you get to the restaurant. So you can, as you see, mobile order collection, pick it up and go right on the spot. And I think you see it too in our marketing. We blend the heritage of our business, those core items that people have loved for years and years and years, nuggets and Big Macs with fresh new items.

7:53We put Menu Heist on the calendar last year in November and brought in heisted menu items from international markets, which prompted, I think, a very modern and fresh and fun way of thinking about our brand, especially in the international context that we operate. um and the menu does feel like it changes like more than ever in some ways now and you were talking about the mini mcflurries earlier and if i have a bone to pick with you it is now that the cabri cream egg mini mcflurry which was a guilty pleasure of mine uh for the last month is now off the menu i know it's my favorite one but like is that that's obviously a conscious thing but what's what are your kind of reflections on how the menu is changing yeah um i think our core items we will always have fan favorites that will be tried and true and stay on forever.

8:41Nuggets, our Big Mac, our Quarter Pounders, clearly our hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Chickens, never going to go away. But we do know that our fans love food news and food excitement, and they're looking for something new and different when they're going out to a restaurant. And so we do aim to bring new items onto the menu just about every month. Okay. And so we do it typically under kind of a campaign theme. So Menu Heist was one. Our festive menu around Grinch included things like pickle, flavored fries, very Grinch-y of us. And then, you know, promotions now, the cards promotion, we're leaning on kind of expanding your vision of what our core menu is.

9:27So we're doing a double Big Mac and we're doing spicy nuggets as well. Flavor, adventure, those are some of the things our customers are looking for. So we're always looking for ways to spice it up. But generally speaking, those things don't last until they come back around the next time. But I remember the McFlurry launching as a kid, right? And I remember it being almost like a real cultural moment in terms of McDonald's kind of moving into ice cream. You had the Sundays before, but the McFlurry sort of thing. How does something, is there a benchmark that something would have to hit, like the kind of spicy McNuggets to be made permanent?

10:06Yeah, it's, so I have to tell you, I worked on menu for McDonald's in the U.S. business for a very long time. So these are all topics that I am very passionate about and probably too well studied on. So if I'm using weird technical terms, I'm sorry. I will ask for clarification. Fine. When we think about what goes on to the menu, we have to think about what is our current menu, those core items that customers know us for and love us for. How much reach did those currently have? And where might we have an opportunity based on customers changing needs to plug a gap in our menu or get to a new occasion?

10:49We talked about that snacking day part. While we are seeing more customers come to us for snacking, we can probably do better at snacking by delivering a beverage lineup that is more competitive with where some of the other restaurant players are going. So we look for gaps, and then what we would have to do is figure out, okay, what do customers want in this current environment? Where might there be a trend, not just a trend, a lasting trend? Because if we're going to put something on as a new core item, McFlurry's is an example. That's a lasting trend. People loved our ice cream. They love the combination of an add-in like M &M's or Oreos or Cadbury mini eggs, which was delicious.

11:33They love that. And the next part of all of that, though, is can we actually do it in our kitchens? Yes. You mentioned how busy our restaurants are. We actually have the busiest restaurants in the U.K. and Ireland in the entire system. We have the most amount of traffic coming through our restaurants on an average basis than any other market out there. Oh, really? And so to make sure that we don't just fill a customer's needs but also can operationalize it is really important. So customer testing might tell us this is where we need to be. But then restaurant testing will say this is what we can and can't actually deliver while still giving those many, many customers that we serve as best of a customer experience we can get.

12:18And one of the big things that you have launched in your first few months is this Youth Confidence Index, right? Yeah. Talk to us about that because one of my things that I sort of worked out is you've been here 50 years. that's almost a million people that have been employed in mcdonald's now it's pretty incredible there are now more political leaders of major parties in the uk that have worked at mcdonald's and have been to oxbridge right which is also kind of fascinating fact zach plansky and kemi made not for anyone that's kind of like listening so it's like it's incredible sort of like um starting a point for lots of people and you're launching something quite exciting we are um Next week, we are officially launching the nation's largest work experience program.

13:07It is built on the heels of a problem that I know we are all trying to solve, which is the fact that the country is nearing almost one million young people who are not in education or employment or training. And we want to be part of that solution. So to your point, we have a history of being a first job for people, of being that first entrance into work experience. And by offering 2 ,500 work placements, again, the largest in the nation, we are hoping that we can get more people into work experiencing what it feels like to be in the workforce, to be part of one of our teams and get those skills, experiences, lessons.

13:53that they can then employ to an interview or to reach their goals of a career ambition. And this youth index that we talked about is very in line with the listening that we tend to do on any part of our business. We talk to our customers all the time. We talk to our crew all the time and whether they're engaged. I talk to my employees all the time. It was just natural as we thought about what our role is in the nation. We employ 100 ,000 young people under the age of 25 right now. And it was important for us to understand within that broader context, within the broader society context, what exactly is that group of young people telling us?

14:31And they're telling us they want jobs. They have career ambitions. One in eight have a career ambition. I was talking to one of our young workers yesterday, 17 years old, Gethin from Cardiff. And he said he wants to be in the army someday. That's what he is working towards. And only in our restaurants is he getting that vibe of teamwork, the community, the teamwork that he needs to then be a successful person within the army. And I just love that. Yeah, yeah. That is one of the things I think about school is it does massively index on individuals. And actually a whole lot of life and work when you're an adult is about teamwork.

15:16There isn't much of that there. So how are these two and a half thousand work placements going to work then? So starting next week, you can go on our website. You can fill out an application or register your interest. I've been told that's the way to say it here. Register your interest. The Americanisms and Britishisms still are a little at odds with each other. And from there, we'll make sure that the local franchisee that would be in your community is going to sift through them and make sure that we can place as many people as possible within these slots. And how long are the programs going?

15:52And they're paid as well, right? They're paid work experience programs. Exactly. Because sometimes people think of work experience as unpaid, two weeks type thing. But this is, talk to us a bit more. It's going to be paid. And how long are they going to be? Paid work experience programs, five days. And it's actually very contextual with what anybody entering our corporate workforce would do. So that five days is going to give you a good understanding of what the different jobs are within our restaurant. Everything from making a burger and putting our world-famous fries together with that burger, to serving a customer, to doing things like inventory management and accounting and, you know, tech troubleshooting.

16:35Talk about AI and where jobs are going. I mean, some of the tech transformation is happening right in our restaurants. And to get a peek under the tent of what it means to kind of operationalize technology in our restaurants is a big deal. So it's a span of opportunity over five days. You might ask, that's not enough to really get the work experience, but it is. I mean, you're going to get an understanding of what it's like to use these skills, teamwork, problem solving, conflict resolution. um like i said accounting inventory and then from there if you want to stay on um we are always hiring yeah um and if you don't you at least have a bit of that additional confidence you might need or the talking points you might need for an interview that then you can go out and and get that next job having had a go at making a big arch as well it's not as straightforward as it looks you've made a big arch i have and it was it was a bit of a it was a bit of a disaster there was a lot more letters on it than it should be yeah i think we still got some footage that's a healthier big arch yeah healthy big arch um that's really interesting what was your first job my first job um was babysitting back when i was in eighth grade uh for a neighbor down the street but my real first paycheck um was working in a deli in pittsburgh pennsylvania it was a french deli um at 16 years old i was a prosciutto slicer and uh cheese slicer and wrapper and communicator i would translate exactly what that cheese was to a customer who had no idea what that cheese was and uh made chicken salads and tuna salads and made sandwiches it was um a lovely saturday and sunday job that earned me that extra pocket money um to buy uh the t-shirt i really wanted at banana a republic which was the thing to have back in 98 yeah um i remember the 90s well what were you like in the 90s mom dad uh right right that's right yeah that's what i was like um and what like because what's the average employment numbers at um mcdonald's right like each restaurant is probably looking at around 80 to 100 people over the course that's right and that's surprising to some people.

18:57Our restaurants are big businesses. On average, we run six million pound restaurants across our 1600 restaurants in the UK and Ireland. And generally speaking, our roster size, that's like the number of people that are in crew or in management at a restaurant, are between 80 to even 130 individuals. Any one shift, you might see 25, 30 people on the floor because it takes a lot and it takes a lot of teamwork to serve that number of customers. And is that because I was thinking about this when I was in McDonald's the other day and watching this. So there were like 15, 20 people, right? And it was sort of mid-afternoon, that Cadbury's mini McFlurry dip that I needed.

19:41But it was busy. And is that because of the, you know, often we think of the amount of technology that's coming in as kind of replacing jobs but actually because there's like nine different ways that you can order that's right yeah but is that is that what's great and there's table service as well that's right what creating the jobs yeah we we've gone from one way of ordering maybe two ways we brought in our drive throughs in the 70s um to i think it's more than 10 different ways of ordering your meal um and And that does take a lot of configuration, a lot of, like I said, teamwork in our restaurants to make that happen.

20:20We think about technology as something that can simplify the experience for the customer, making it a very seamless order to pick up, to enjoying your great meal. And for our crew, it's about empowering them. And if you can use technology to make their jobs easier, it enables them to be better at customer service. We talk about empowering them to create more magic moments in our dining through because we know we need to keep getting better at customer service. I look at customer contacts every single week and figure out how I can get more accurate, how I can create more magic moments, better hospitality.

20:59That's a goal of ours and technology enables that. Yeah, absolutely. And it is those magic moments. I mean, I remember like growing up, there'd be one that we would go to in Derby where I'm from. Okay. go on a wednesday evening and there would be um there would basically be quite a famous darby county footballer that would go in there like a celeb yeah yeah he was taking his kids right but it was like and i remember the exact booth that we used to sit in and so on and like it was a really sort of like you know special time or whatever i also have his autograph about 50 times i think from the amount of times i would go but it's like um it just i sort of just shows like that it's kind of obviously in some ways the brand is like the most American thing but because it's been here so long it does feel sort of quasi-British a little bit as well uh absolutely I mean we are an American brand but we are British owned and run and supplied um and of course shopped uh in the UK and Ireland and um it's really important for everyone to understand that I I mean, we might look like a giant American company, but most of our franchisees own between one and eight restaurants.

22:15They're small business owners. And they are tried and true in that community, always looking for, you know, not just creating a magic moment, but giving back to that community, employing from that community. And, of course, sourcing from local farmers. Yeah. I do want to go back to that that magic moment thing, though, because when I go out to restaurants, usually I'm escorted out to a restaurant and they have all of their teams there and everybody's in like perfect uniform. There's presentations and balloons. But what I really like to do and this is like a new family thing that we're doing here.

22:53I made my kids, made my kids like talk about it. We're doing Let's Explore Sundays, but you have to like raise your hand at the Let's Explore Sunday, you know, and we're going to go out to the country and see different things in England. And last weekend we went to Stowe Landscape Gardens. We have this book called Hidden Walks. And so we're doing these hidden walks around National Trust areas like Stowe. And so in that area, we went to the local McDonald's that was there. And of course, my franchisees, if they're listening to this, they're like, oh my gosh, he's traveling on Sundays. Be ready for it.

23:30But it was the most wonderful family moment. And I wasn't the only family that had that moment. They had a whole table designated for coloring. and there were kids getting their coloring sheets and coloring at their table while they were waiting for food the food was great the hospitality there was someone walking around making sure everybody was well situated it was a very magical American family goes to the UK experience and I can say that because it was a surprise visit and I think more often than not you're going to get those magic moments in our restaurant it's interesting the queen used to say that everywhere you smell of fresh paint when she went because everywhere had been painted there you go that's right but it's but there are lots of things like that sonny and i were in one the other day and they've got face painting every saturday yes afternoon there yes and so on and i was like i was quite glad that wasn't my local one otherwise it'd be even harder to get my kids like out but what's the um what like what what freedom do franchisees have to do things like coloring tables face painting etc Yeah, well, you should know, too, 50 % of our business is families.

24:44We have a big Happy Meal business, specifically. And so nurturing families and making sure we do deliver those magic moments is very, very important to us. With that, we have a whole local store marketing program. And you can opt in, you can do, in essence, whatever you want within a playbook to make customers' experiences as magic as possible. So we have characters that come in. I was in a restaurant once, and I think Bluey was there. And we have the Disney princesses that come. They have face painting, balloon art. Like I said, coloring is always there. And I think the most important thing is we have what we call customer experience leads that are in the lobby, making sure if you order at the kiosk, you can take a number and put it at your table.

25:36And I have five kids. As a mom of five kids, you just kind of want to be served sometimes. And for someone, the customer experience lead to come out with a tray and it's all there, it just makes it so much easier. And if you forget the ketchup, they'll go back and get a little bit more for you. um i'm gonna ask about five kids uh later but what's the um what's the talk to us about like what you look for when you're hiring people right because you're in this new leadership role in the uk and ireland you're going to be here for a while like what is it that you're looking for when you're hiring it's uh it's funny you ask that because i've had to kind of use three c's quite quite a lot recently i've just bought on a new chief marketing officer a new head of supply chain.

26:23And the three words that really stand out are content. And content is someone that drives results, someone that really understands how to focus and prioritize to get those results based on the plan that we have set. I talk about character, really strong values. It's important to our business. It's important to our brand. And it's very important to me. And I talk about collaboration. And clearly, I talked about teamwork earlier. But I like to build teams where there's no I in team, no egos. We are all in this together and we all understand how the business works together. So each functional lead can do their part to drive the overall business.

27:05I think, though, as well as those three C's, as we think about future of work, creativity is really important these days. And I think having not just critical thinking skills, but creativity and how you solve problems is so important. Having a strategic mindset, also very important. And data fluency, knowing how to look at data, look at charts and put those dots together, very important. And in a world where AI is becoming a bigger and bigger tool, if you've got creativity and a good strategic acumen and data fluency, you'll be successful in just about any job you can take on. So can you give me an example of a creative idea recently that could not have been done by AI?

27:56I think our menu heist is a really good example of that. Our menu heist was a campaign that we ran in November. And it's something that's very uniquely McDonald's, something that I don't think AI could have just thought about in the context of a restaurant industry. They would really need to know our business specifically. But a fun fact about McDonald's is that the menu changes everywhere you go. If you're in France, if you're in the UAE, if you're in America, you're going to get different menu items. And so the menu heist was an aggregation of some of those very interesting, well-loved, and even maybe daring products.

28:42The McSpicy with the pineapple on top was one of those make-you-uncomfortable sandwiches here. But there was a lot of people that wanted to try it because we didn't have that. And that taste combination was different. And I think it's not just the concept that's something that's creative. It's how we then executed it. Yeah. And I come from a marketing background, so it's a passion of mine. Really great creativity within brand communication, I think, has to be done by humans. I think the insights, I think kind of the gathering of what might feed that creative could be outsourced to AI. But how humans bring creativity to life is a uniquely human skill.

29:24How did you get into marketing? What was the sort of idea? Yeah. So if I go back, I went from deli meat slicer to that was a Saturday job to college. And my degree in college was an art history, which great degree, great critical thinking skills. I think history is a phenomenal thing you can understand, especially in these times. But that didn't necessarily land with what I was going to do next in my job. I was once one of those people under 25 without education and employment or training at age 22 to 23. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And I then went back into the restaurant industry because I had a passion for it.

30:15I loved hospitality. I loved food. And I worked for a fine dining company called Big Burrito Group. They still exist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm giving them a shout out because my my career really did start with them. And they, like this work experience program, trained me how to be a hostess and a server and work the line in the kitchen and expedite and ultimately be an assistant manager for one of their big flagship restaurants. And that then took me back to business school. I wanted to get some additional skills, some additional education so I could maybe work in a more corporate environment, still staying in hospitality.

30:55Yeah. So my business degree, getting back to your question, was in marketing specifically. OK. I loved the notion of business growth, understanding where consumer and business competition and industry collided and where you could figure out the growth opportunity. and I then sliding door, I know you're a kind of fan of the sliding door theory. Someone from McDonald's came to my business school and did a case study on the Happy Meal business, which back in 2008 was in decline in the U.S. business. And they asked business students to come in and give them solutions on how they could turn around the Happy Meal business.