The big cheese at McDonald's

An very interesting article:

Manawatu Standard Last updated 12:00 31/08/2009

I had the best cheeseburger ever at McDonald's global headquarters - shame about the art.
The food at the "working McDonald's restaurant" was hot, great tasting, and fresh. But the paintings and sculptures throughout the huge 50 hectare campus were bad - hideous, in fact.
The head office of the global conglomerate has 300 employees and no offices.

It is all open plan, except for a few meeting rooms, where the secret-squirrel stuff on ingredients for the mega-giant takes place.

There are also eight test kitchens and sensory evaluation booths, so the company can test product response.

McDonald's Heidi Barker, from the communication team, showed a group of New Zealand journalists around the head office and Hamburger university.

Each year, 5000 students come from around the world to learn management and business-development skills.

They are franchise owners, crew members, restaurant managers and executives.

Company head office employees, depending on their status, have to work in a McDonald's as part of their training. Even the top executives do their time behind the counter of their local McDonald's.

The chain earns an estimated US$23 billion a year, which equates to 58 million people eating McDonald's food every day and consumption is still growing.

A public company, it is listed on the sharemarket.

The company said if you bought and held 100 shares in 1965, it would have cost US$2250.
Today you would have almost 75,000 shares worth about US$4m.

There are two distinct buildings on the site the university and the global headquarters.
But the whole place is scarily sterile and quiet. In fact, it has a sort of Stepford Wives feel about it.

When it came time to sit on the seat with the Ronald McDonald plastic character, she got really close to him. Very close.

There was the usual hooping and shrieking from the Kiwis. We got the big hush, finger to the lips, from the McDonald's people.

New Zealand's Fonterra supplies cheese slices to Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
It's the big time, worth many millions of dollars.

It also puts pastry through its Pastry House into McCafes in Australia and New Zealand.
The company has looked at the pastry model to see if it can be applied elsewhere in the world.

In 2008 McDonald's New Zealand used:
4.7 million kg beef
2.2 million kg chicken
1.37 million kg of lettuce
288,000 kg of tomatoes
66 million buns
13 million eggs
200,000 kg of hoki
From dairy:
1.5 million litres of milk
1 million kg of cheese

* Jill Galloway's trip to the United States was sponsored by Fonterra.