Behind The Arches

Behind the Arches

Class Act

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It was just a few years ago that this all-American franchise received something of a drubbing in the media for its lackluster sales, diminishing reputation of quality and supersizing of the nation's collective waistline. But arguably, it remained a beloved restaurant with the public, and in the past two years, meals at McDonald's have been happier. A renaissance in management and training seems to have taken place, and sales are up, in part because of an expansion of the menu, including healthier fare like the $2.99 fruit-and-walnut salad.

Point being: McDonald's stores are more popular franchises to own than ever, and because of that, getting a franchise--and getting into Hamburger University--is something akin to being accepted to Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Like at an Ivy League college, the tuition is steep (buying a McDonald's franchise generally requires having a minimum of $200,000 nonborrowed money at your disposal), but the reputation for having studied under the masters generally means high returns on the investment. The average McDonald's brings in $1.9 million in revenue a year, and while most entrepreneurs only have one or two restaurants, it's possible to have several.

"We receive a massive number of applications," says Diana Thomas, Hamburger University's dean, referring to the people wanting and waiting to own a McDonald's franchise. Only about 1 percent are accepted, and since approximately one unit opens somewhere in the world every day, one could make a rough estimate that, annually, about 36,000 applicants worldwide vie to own their own McDonald's.

Thomas has worked for McDonald's in one capacity or another since she was a teenager, and she has seen plenty of changes at Hamburger University--many of which have come in the past few years, since she started her tenure as dean. "We used to have a lot of classrooms that looked like any classroom you'd see at a university," recalls Thomas, who took classes at Hamburger University as a manager and executive, and still participates in classes there. "We'd put a lot of people in a room and teach in a lecture format. But we've changed a lot to meet the needs of our users and to make it more interactive. It's more experiential. We divide the room into small, cubicle-like work areas with the material on flip charts, and [we] do role-playing so everyone can actually demonstrate the roles that they're learning."

Indeed, earlier in the day, I was allowed to observe two classrooms from the translation booths, which are typically used by international visitors in the classroom. If needed, McDonald's has interpreters who can translate into 28 different languages, including Korean, Malay, Portuguese and Swedish.

In a class on business leadership, I set my sights on one of three tables in the room, where four men and one woman, in their 30s to early 50s, were having a heated discussion:

"This is another objective to support the goal."

"We're going to have two months? To complete all this?"

"I think he's saying that the amount of objects we have may not be achievable in three months. I'm just saying what his point is, and I think he's saying that we're biting off more than we can chew."

On several flip charts around them are various mandates. One is titled "Goals," with "to improve commitment survey results from 72 percent to 85 percent" written underneath. Another says "Sales,"