Once upon a time, the ideal CEO of a restaurant chain was someone sporting enough scars from burns, knife cuts and scrubbing stains off carpets to prove they’d risen to the top from the lowliest of unit-level jobs. They knew the organization because they’d worked in it from the lowest rung, re-proving themselves at every step upward.
There are still some chain leaders like that. Rick Cardenas, the CEO of casual-dining behemoth Darden Restaurants, started as a busser at a Red Lobster. He succeeded Gene Lee, who’d begun his career as a dishwasher in a York Steak House, which an earlier iteration of Darden once owned.
Yet, as Cardenas’ resume suggests, another sort of work experience is emerging as the ideal training for today’s restaurant CEO, a position of seemingly ever-expanding duties. Today’s chain chief has to understand everything from employees’ difficulties finding affordable housing to supply-chain issues, shifting government requirements, the latest in technology and what the hell an influencer is.
Customers are only one of their key constituents. Neglecting employees’ changing sensitivities can bring a union to the door. Some investors not only want a jaw-dropping return but also a hand on the steering wheel. And ink-stained wretches like me are ready to trumpet their misfires, sometimes overlooking how much they learned in setting things right again.
Perhaps that’s why many leaders of today’s mega-operations, from McDonald’s to Starbucks to six-brand owner Inspire Brands, logged time on their rise to the chief’s job at one of the business world’s consulting giants.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski worked for Boston Consulting Group, with a focus on consumer products and pharmaceuticals, after attending Harvard Business School.
Starbucks new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., the McDonald’s of corporate consulting, where he, too, focused on consumer clients, along with technology and retailing companies.
At McKinsey alumni meetings, he might run into Paul Brown, the CEO of Inspire. Under his leadership, the company was formed through the combination of Arby’s and Buffalo Wild Wings, with Dunkin’, Sonic, Jimmy John’s and Baskin-Robbins added to the fold. It’s now one of the industry’s largest franchisors.
Brown could also share Boston Consulting’s secret handshake with Kempczinski, having worked at that advisory group as well.
Cardenas left the predecessor company of Darden to work at Bain & Co. for a while. The consulting firm is also the alma mater of Christine Barone, who left True Foods Kitchen to take the president’s post at Dutch Bros.
Eduardo Luz, the new CEO of P.F. Chang’s, spent a portion of his career at Accenture.
John Peyton, CEO of Applebee’s and IHOP, lists a stint as management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers on his resume.
It’s a decidedly mixed group in terms of ages, overall work experiences and backgrounds. Yet a common trait is evident in talking to the consultancy alumni’s subordinates: As former hired guns brought in to solve clients’ problems, they honed their listening, analytical and problem-solving skills.
Team members also note an aversion by the one-time consultants to avoid being captured in a CEO bubble, isolated from rank-and-file customers and employees. Starbucks employees note that Narasimhan is often spotted in the background of Zoom calls originating from headquarters, going from desk to desk for a ground-level view of what’s happening.
He requires that all C-level execs spend at least four hours per month working in a store.
For a profile of Inspire’s CEO, subordinates told us, “There’s listening, and then there’s paying attention a la [Paul] Brown.”
In short, they bring a different skill set to the job than predecessors might have wielded in the chain segment’s coming of age, when the brand founder was often in the corner office, surrounded by the buddies (and almost always men) who’d been with them from the operation’s earliest days. McDonald’s second chairman, after Ray Kroc, was Fred Turner, his one-time grillman.
Turner was succeeded as CEO by Michael Quinlan, who started in McDonald’s mail room.
The professionalization of chain CEOs might nibble at the industry’s reputation as a field of open opportunity. At one time, the chiefs of the three biggest chains didn’t even have a college degree.
But it speaks to how complicated the job of CEO has become. No wonder so many of today’s executives in that position have reached out for help from big consulting and research concerns.
Maybe they should slip their contacts a job application while they’re at it.