The McDonalds Quotient
17th December 2015
Our company was born out of my own experience as the owner of seven franchised ice cream stores. But years before I owned a chain of quick-service retail establishments, I worked at one. I worked at McDonald’s, where I slung french fries, scrubbed high-chairs, and worked the drive-thru for $6.40/hour (Canadian!)
This investor that sat in front of me was successful. Wealthy. Smart, really smart. He attended an elite private school, and earned two different degrees from separate Ivy League institutions.
But he had never worked at McDonald’s before.
And I bet he had never known anyone that had.
It made me feel a bit like a savant. Here was this brilliant, successful man, who knew 2X or 3X more about many things than I did. But I knew 100X or even 1000X more about a huge part of the world that he had never really experienced.
There are 20 million retail workers in America, with two million of them working at McDonald’s and Walmart alone. Call it whatever you want: “the middle class”, “the working class”, “blue collar workers.” Whatever euphemism you choose, the fact is that a huge portion of North American workers are supporting themselves and their families by working for an hourly wage, often close to the minimum, in retail or hospitality.