McDonald's is retraining 2 million people to say hello

Author

Andy Moore
September 14, 2026

Hello!

Today we’re covering…

  • Chains rediscovering hospitality

  • RIP O’Charley’s?

  • Jersey Mike’s first report card

Read on…

3 Numbers

$325 million

Investment secured by Authentic Restaurant Brands — the parent company of Pollo Tropical, Tavern in the Square and Primanti Bros, among other regional brands — from Trimontium, the (somewhat menacingly named) asset manager. The investment includes debt, equity and hybrid financing and is aimed at driving growth at Authentic’s concepts.

49

Company-owned O'Charley's restaurants that closed at 8 p.m. on September 9, ending a 55-year run that peaked at nearly 250 locations. Owner Cannae Holdings' filings show guest counts down 23.8% and comps down 13.1% in the second quarter. Four franchised stores in Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee are still open for now.

661 million pounds

The volume of lean beef trimmings that can enter the U.S. at the low in-quota tariff (skipping the usual 26.4% rate) for 90 days starting September 1, under a proclamation the President signed August 26. That would be 300,000 metric tons, at 100,000 per month; the Farm Bureau puts the waived tariff at roughly $650 million.

The Big Story

Fascinating stuff this week from the WSJ, worth quoting at length:

After spending millions of dollars on digital kiosks and mobile-ordering systems, fast-food chains are discovering a lot of customers just want somebody to take their order at the counter and do so in a friendly way, according to executives, market-research, and industry documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Convenience and speed aren’t good enough for today’s fast-food customers, and McDonald’s needs to improve how it offers friendly service to diners to attract them, said Tiffanie Boyd, McDonald’s global chief people officer. The company is making one of the biggest hospitality pushes in its history next month, she said.

“Food is important,” Boyd said. “Price is important, but experience has also become much more important than it used to be.”

McDonald’s aims for workers to emphasize hospitality throughout customers’ visits, delivering energetic greetings such as “Enjoy your meal!” and “See you soon!” according to a recent internal training document, a copy which was viewed by the Journal. 

McDonald’s isn’t alone: Wendy’s is including service improvements in its strategic overhaul; at Burger King, managers are “being instructed to double-check that orders are made the way customers want [and] ensure front counters are staffed;” and at Starbucks, execs have stressed improved service and better-looking cafes as cornerstones of its turnaround.

It’s somewhat comical that restaurants are having to relearn this lesson — that hospitality really matters — but it’s better late than never. The broader foodservice world is deeply competitive, and service and experience are becoming the last things that restaurants can truly own.

I remember going to MUFSO over a decade ago and hearing a panelist saying, essentially, that the biggest competitive threat to restaurants in 10 years is that good-tasting food is going to be ubiquitous. I wish I could remember who said that, because they nailed it.

The U.S. restaurant industry has never been more competitive. Longtime chains are constantly upgrading their menu offerings; new concepts are continuously popping up. I’m immersed in this industry, and still, roughly once a week, I’ll learn about an incredibly popular concept with 50+ units, an interesting niche, and a dedicated fanbase. The level of competition is leading to faster adaptation than ever before — beverage programs were an afterthought for most QSRs just a couple of years ago; they are now table stakes.

But it would be a mistake to think a restaurant’s only competition is other restaurants. Living in Dallas means being in the epicenter of just about every grocery concept in the country pulling out all the stops to win the DFW market. I’ve seen their prepared food programs become more and more ambitious, encroaching further and further onto turf traditionally occupied by restaurants.

My family picked up a perfectly serviceable (cooked) pizza at Whole Foods last night for, like, $10. We could have gone to Central Market and pulled together relatively affordable prepared meals with honey garlic flank steak or chipotle honey pork loin, or popped into an old local standby, Eatzi’s, to grab (quite tasty) made-to-order sandwiches.

Then there are c-stores — Wawa, Buc-ee’s, Casey’s, Sheetz — which have clearly borrowed from restaurant playbooks to snatch their market share. Sheetz now has drive-thrus; Casey’s is the country’s fifth-largest pizza chain.

For restaurants to win against the c-stores or a $10 Whole Foods pizza, they've got to offer the one thing the hot case can't: an actual person. Someone warm, or funny, or even a little odd. Memorable, mostly. That's really hard to pull off with a kiosk — as a McDonald’s franchisee group put it in a recent survey, "Many guests say their experiences in our restaurants seem rushed, impersonal, sterile and cold."

It’s promising that the broader QSR industry is going in a service-forward direction. Restaurants aren’t tech companies and they’re not manufacturing centers. They’re places of both escape and connection. Fill them with whatever technology makes sense, but remember the tech has to serve the ultimate goal, which is making the customer happy. Humans are uniquely good at doing that.

Elsewhere In the Headlines

Name That Chain!

You’ve got three clues to name this issue’s chain:

  • Two brothers followed their father into the same job he held for 43 years, then quit to open a sandwich shop in a suburban Jacksonville strip center in October 1994.

  • The stores — which make heavy use of red in their color scheme — sell an inexpensive item at their register, with all proceeds going to the chain’s foundation.

  • In 2021 a multi-concept operator paid $1 billion in cash for it, on the condition it stay headquartered in Jacksonville. Today it has more than 1,200 restaurants in 46 states.

Find the answer at the bottom of the email…

Power Moves

Here are some notable recent C-suite moves:

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you again next week.

NAME THAT CHAIN ANSWER: Firehouse Subs

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