OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Two boxes of french fries stacked on the kitchen floor, rather than stored in a freezer. An empty salt shaker at the fry station. A dry, unseasoned cheeseburger served on a hardened bun.
Those are just a few of the problems a McDonald's manager is expected to spot in this mock kitchen. If they miss them, it's probably a good bet that they won't be making the dean's list at Hamburger University in this Chicago suburb, where managers are graded on everything from handling customer complaints to hiring the best workers.
Each year, hundreds of new McDonald's U.S. general managers spend five days at Hamburger University on the burger giant's corporate campus, working toward an honorary bachelor's degree in Hamburgerology. During their visits, they role play, have meetings with their boss -- in this case, a professor -- and prepare to return home and make real improvements at the restaurants they run.
"If you think about it, each of them is running a multimillion-dollar business," said Rob Lauber, vice president and chief learning officer of McDonald's Restaurant Solutions Group. "So we want to make sure they have good business grounding."
Every general manager makes a run through Hamburger University, taking courses that include shift management, introduction to management and guest services before they get to the session known as the General Manager Capstone. There are training classes for other leaders as well.
"We put a little bit of pressure on them to quickly make their decisions, just like they do back home," said Jason Hamm, McDonald's national training manager for the U.S. "We try to throw a lot of different things at them."
Hamburger University opened in 1961 and has seen some 330,000 students take its courses around the world. But the need for training is especially urgent now as McDonald's pushes to turn around its U.S. business, which has seen comparable sales and customer visits slip for two consecutive years. Average sales at a McDonald's restaurant in the United States fell to nearly $2.5 million in 2014 after exceeding $2.5 million a year earlier.
On April 1, McDonald's pledged to bolster educational opportunities for U.S. workers, including covering costs for certain high school and college courses. In making the announcement, which also includes wage increases at the company's own U.S. restaurants, CEO Steve Easterbrook noted that focusing on people held the key to a turnaround.
"A motivated workforce leads to better customer service," he said.
Fred Turner, who rose from working as a grill man to McDonald's senior chairman, started Hamburger University in the basement of a McDonald's restaurant in suburban Chicago. Fifteen students graduated from the first class in February 1961. There are seven Hamburger Universities around the world, including the newest in Shanghai, which opened in 2010.
Numerous McDonald's executives have taken courses at Hamburger University, including McDonald's USA President Mike Andres. Easterbrook took operations training at the school's London location. Overall, 40 percent of McDonald's global leadership has attended Hamburger University.
At the 130,000-square-foot learning lab in Oak Brook, called the Fred L. Turner Training Center, general managers learn leadership, teamwork and decision-making skills in classroom and restaurant settings. Ninety to 120 general managers graduate from each session of the General Manager Capstone, which is set to be held about 20 times in 2015.
Franchisees pay $145 for a staff member to take the course, and also pay for flights, meals and accommodations for the week.
During a recent class, students tried to identify what was wrong with a cheeseburger, fries and a smoothie.
"I'd say gritty if I have to call it something," one student said of the fries. She and her team walked through the mock restaurant to identify problems with how the fries were handled before and after frying. Two cases of uncooked fries were sitting out near the fry station, while one was stored in a stockroom only for dry goods, issues they called "temperature abuse."
At the same time, the salt shaker at the fry station was empty. And the crew member who should have been manning the fry station was instead hanging out with the counter person. As the student said: "It all correlated to very gross fries."
During what's known as the boss meeting, the professor pressed the teams for more information, and sometimes nodded and smiled at their answers, but she did not divulge their scores on the spot. Later, she would give them scores and written feedback.
Years ago, the classes used to be strictly lectures but now the students work in teams, said Bill Mitchell, who in February became dean of the Hamburger University in Oak Brook. He said the switch can help students hone their leadership skills to work with their own restaurant employee teams.
The training at times appears intense. Students are given set amounts of time to complete their tasks, such as computerized scheduling sessions in which they try to set the proper staffing levels to meet sales, labor and profit goals. Students must assess their findings and come up with plans before presenting them to the professor in both oral and written form.
For many, the training is their first time in a classroom in years.
"We estimate between 20 and 30 percent of our restaurant managers haven't finished high school," said Lauber, who oversees everything from Hamburger University to McDonald's effort to provide wider access to English, high school and college courses for its employees.
Lauber, who joined McDonald's in 2014 after leading learning at rival Yum Brands, said the company is aiming to bring more digital training into Hamburger University, but classroom work will remain.
"There's huge value in the classroom piece," Lauber said. He also sees opportunities to extend the Hamburger University brand into other areas such as business development training for franchisees.
Students enrolled in the General Manager Capstone session have virtual meetings and classes in the months leading up to their visits to Oak Brook, giving them a foundation in their new roles as general managers and a stronger sense of how their work affects results at their restaurants.
McDonald's is not alone in running corporate training for managers. Companies such as Farmers Insurance and General Electric have their own training centers. But McDonald's has some unique issues as it trains its own employees, from its company-owned locations, as well as those who work for the franchisees who run the vast majority of its restaurants.
"Early on (McDonald's) realized that each of those stores needed somebody who not only had skills, but had judgment," said Elliott Masie, chairman of the Learning Consortium, 230 companies that run a research collaborative focused on workforce learning. Companies in the Learning Consortium include McDonald's, Starbucks, Google, Microsoft and Wal-Mart.
As part of his work, Masie has studied Hamburger University and other corporate training efforts.
Some, which he declined to name, are more like the "Club Med of learning," Masie said. He said McDonald's has a different reputation. "They bust them there. It is a rigorous academic and interpersonal piece of the puzzle at McDonald's."
SundayMonday Business on 05/04/2015