McDonald’s CEO sounds the alarm over crime in Chicago
Kempczinski said during an event at the Economic Club of Chicago on Wednesday.
“Everywhere I go, I’m faced with the same question these days – what’s going on in Chicago? While hearing it may hurt our civic pride, there is a general feeling that our city is in crisis.”
“We have violent crime going on in our restaurants… we’re seeing a homeless problem in our restaurants. We’re having drug overdoses going on. in our restaurants,” he said. “So we see in our restaurants, every day, what’s happening in society at large.”
The Chicago Mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kempczinski’s remarks.
A Starbucks spokesperson told CNN Business at the time: “After careful consideration, we will be closing some stores in locations that have experienced a high volume of challenging incidents that have made it unsafe. to continue operating”.
Like Kempczinski, Starbucks leaders say national and community dynamics tend to manifest in their stores.
Debbie Stroud and Denise Nelsen, Starbucks senior vice president of US operations, wrote in an open letter to employees in July. “With stores in thousands of communities across the country, we know that these challenges can sometimes occur in our stores as well.
Kempczinski also highlights another challenge.
“For McDonald’s, however, the problem is not just about conditions in the stores – it’s also about recruiting leaders to the company’s headquarters and persuading the company’s employees to return to the office,” the CEO said.
“It’s harder for me today to convince a promising McDonald’s executive to move to Chicago from one of our other offices than it was a few years ago,” he said. “Recruiting a new employee for McDonald’s to come with us to Chicago is more difficult than it used to be.”
And when he got back to the office, he said, “one of the things I hear from our employees [is] … ‘I’m not sure it’s safe to go downtown.’ ”
But McDonald’s remained committed to Chicago, where it was headquartered from 1955 to 1971, and started again in 2018. From 1971 to 2018, the company was headquartered in Oak Brook, a suburb of Chicago.
McDonald’s on Wednesday announced plans to open a new innovation facility at its headquarters in Chicago, moving employees away from its current innovation hub in Romeoville, Illinois.