Case Study: McDonalds

To truly understand the fundamental reason for cultural behaviours, we need to look for commonalities. 

Founded in 1940 in the United States, McDonalds is now a global fast-food chain with over 40,000 restaurants, in 115 countries, globally. 

McDonalds starting working with Culture Excellence in 2019 across our supply chain.

If we take looking at different greetings across the world, Professor Bizhan Pourkomailian, Global Restaurant and Distribution Food Safety Director, suggested this helps to demonstrate the differences we experience with culture. The aim is the same across the world, but the way in which it is done is different which is what we have experienced when relating this to working environments/restaurants. Increasingly in the modern world, due to increased global movement we  are seeing a large mix of cultures and we want to ensure that we consider how to mix these differing cultures positively. In order to truly understand the fundamental reason for cultural behaviours, we need to look for commonalities. The most important thing is respect. From there we can adapt behaviours from difference cultures and focus on differences, whilst recognising that there is no good and bad. 

Culture is important to think about throughout a business, but food safety culture is a buzz word that invites useful discussions around food safety. 

By undertaking the Culture Excellence assessment across our supply chain, the opportunity for improvement was identified in the “Innovation” dimension of the model. Since receiving these results, we have implemented a complete digitalisation of food safety paperwork which includes automation of certain tasks. This has meant that colleagues do not need to spend as much time completed paperwork, we have an increased representation of live data and we have alarm systems to highlight loss of control of food safety hazards. These interventions have been adopted in over 90% of our restaurants which is a huge achievement. 

Our aim is to ensure that our colleagues across the globe can see that food safety is a priority and investment is being made in the future of the business. 

Reference: Campden BRI (2022), Culture Excellence 8th Annual Seminar