We Are McFamily

It turns out I have a few things in common with Paul Ryan, the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate: a boyhood spent near the shores of Lake Michigan; high school basketball; and membership in a common family – as teens, we both worked the grill at our local McDonald’s.

I’m not trying to be glib or sarcastic. McDonald’s truly is a special shared relationship. It’s no small family, of course. In the nearly 60 years since Ray Kroc opened the first unit, in Des Plaines, Ill., I’d guess the number of kids who got their first jobs there matches the famous, ever-increasing “hamburgers sold” sign.

Like Ryan, my McDonald’s earnings paid for a good part of my college education. I’m thinking he earned more than I did. The salary in my day was $1 an hour, but you logged a lot of hours.

I mention all this because next month at IRDC, Francesco Cordua, director of retail design for McDonald’s USA, will show the company’s latest concept. And I’m telling you, it’s extraordinary. This is a company, after all, with a history of innovation.

There have been a lot of iterations since I worked at the red and white tiled McDonald’s on the corner of Dempster Street and Niles Center Road in Skokie, Ill. (Reportedly the second or third location in the company’s history.)

There were no kids play areas, flatscreen TVs, drive-throughs, special McCoffees or McBreakfasts. There were two walk-up windows where people could order from a limited menu of hamburgers (15 cents), cheeseburgers (19 cents), fries (a dime), Coke, orange or root beer (10 and 15 cents) and chocolate, vanilla or strawberry milkshakes (20 cents).

Everything had a system and special equipment. That system might have been the McDonald’s genius, even more than the innovative pricing and marketing. Not only could you really put the “fast” in food, but you could hire a lot of cheap, young, eager, unskilled workers.

What Ryan and I both learned there was the value of hard work, responsibility, coordination in a well-thought-out system, showing up on time and not leaving until the dinner crowd thinned out and the boss said, “Kaufman, go home!”

I had the pleasure of interviewing Cordua for an article in the April issue of VMSD. I told him we were related through the McDonald’s family tree. He responded as I’d expected him to, not with a sarcastic snort or off-hand dismissal but with the warmth you’d presume from a distant cousin you had never met.

When you see this new McDonald’s concept at IRDC in Chicago, you’ll see some amazing design innovations and how the family has grown from that little one-room building we all grew up in decades ago.

For more on Cordua's session at the International Retail Design Conference, and the entire IRDC programming, visit www.irdconline.com.