From Rostering Specialists to Shared Store Managers: How McDonald’s Turns People into the System’s “Flesh”?

Foodthink says

If the previous article took us into a McDonald’s kitchen, where we saw a small factory running at high speed in 90-second cycles, this article will show us how that factory is managed and kept running.

From price anchoring in meal design to ever-smaller store spaces, and from shift-scheduling experts and shared store managers to intelligent systems that try to predict everything, McDonald’s is pursuing maximum efficiency through a highly precise operating system.

But in this system, people are always the largest variable. Standardised processes, digital tools and KPIs make every employee part of the system, yet they cannot fully replace judgement shaped by experience and on-the-spot response.

This article is compiled from Episode 61 of the “Food Talk” podcast. We once again invite Jiang Ke, a former McDonald’s duty manager, to discuss the business logic behind a portion of chips and a shift rota, as well as how workers are quantified and managed in an efficiency-first fast-food system, and how they coexist with it. As consumers, behind every quick order and every on-time collection, we are also connected to countless acts of labour within this vast system.

This Episode’s Guest

Jiang Ke | Food-industry newbie, loves analysing the people, food and operations in stores, and usually watches Yong Ge as a mealtime companion

This Episode’s Host

Yu Yang | Foodthink editor, who was once given a good thrashing for insisting on McDonald’s as a child

Li Ye | Someone with ADHD who has played Airplane Chef on an iPad, made shawarma and run a breakfast shop

Large, Medium or Small Chips: Which Should I Choose?

Yu Yang: While you’re working, do you get to see the cost of McDonald’s ingredients?

Jiang Ke: Actually, as a duty manager, you can already see what all the ingredients cost, and they’re consistently low. Why not name a menu item you particularly like?

Li Ye: Chips.

Jiang Ke: Chips are still not something that’s easy to quantify, because the amount each employee serves can differ somewhat. The standard for chips is that there should be no empty space left in the bag once the chips are in. But in practice, if that amount is followed, customers end up with a smaller amount.

Li Ye: This is my favourite question: large, medium or small chips, which one is better value?

Jiang Ke: If you order them à la carte, they’re not really good value. If the selling price is 12 or 14 yuan, the cost might be just over one yuan. In terms of ingredient cost alone, it’s quite low. If you buy them as part of a set meal, the cost can be spread so that a portion of chips works out at seven or eight yuan, which is relatively better value.

Li Ye: So, do large, medium and small chips differ much in amount?

Jiang Ke: It depends on each person’s filling technique, especially with part-time students, who keep stuffing chips into the bag. Many duty managers think, My goodness, that’s enough for two portions.

Yu Yang: This really upends my assumptions. I thought McDonald’s was a very standardised place, and that only small restaurants or university canteens would have older aunts and uncles with shaky hands. I didn’t expect McDonald’s to have such a lack of standardisation.

Jiang Ke: Yes, actually there are standards for how much is in each portion of chips and roughly how much each portion of ice cream should weigh. But this comes down to staff training. If staff aren’t trained properly, they’ll think, I’ll just fill the bag, and I’ll pump the ice cream until the lid won’t close.

Li Ye: Yes, we do need to thank university students.

From a Burger to a Four-Piece Combo: McDonald’s Pricing Psychology

Yu Yang: Let me ask a fairly practical question: how can we order at McDonald’s to get better value?

Jiang Ke: At McDonald’s, you really shouldn’t order à la carte; it’s simply too expensive. For example, say you order a burger: a chicken burger might be 22 yuan, a cola seems to be 10 yuan, and chips are 12 yuan, so the three of them already add up to 36 yuan. In fact, very few people order à la carte; most people tend to order a set meal and feel they’ve saved a lot. Take the three-piece combo just mentioned: if you order a set meal, even adding a portion of chicken nuggets still works out at just over 30 yuan. But you’ll think a portion of chicken nuggets is also 12 yuan, so it feels as if you’ve saved more than ten yuan out of thin air!

It’s basically about pushing up individual item prices so that the set meal feels particularly good value, thereby increasing the purchase rate. This is an important psychological concept: price anchoring. Many chain restaurants use a similar strategy of raising individual item prices to encourage spending. Perhaps you only want a burger, a little over 20 yuan, and just want a sip of cola, but ordering the burger and cola à la carte already costs 30 yuan; why not add a few yuan to get a four-piece combo, right?

Second, if you really do go there every day, the McDonald’s card is still worth buying. If you only go a few times, perhaps once a week, and want more choice, I’d recommend a devious hack — have someone place the order for you directly via Xianyu or Taobao, and you can get the McDonald’s Gold card price.

Li Ye: And this price anchoring effect can also improve customer satisfaction. When people order a set meal, everyone is happy: the producer earns money, and the consumer feels they’ve saved money.

Yu Yang: A while ago, the price of McDonald’s Mix & Match went up; the Double Hamburger and the Fish Burger are now 14.9 yuan.

Li Ye: Some people say McDonald’s should just start making macarons in the future, with the burgers as small as macarons. Others say they feel the meat inside has also become thinner. Is that true?

Jiang Ke: I don’t know much about this wave of price increases, because I’ve already left the company. But what I understood before was that the patties are actually all the same. Whether it’s the meat in the Double Hamburger or the meat in the Big Mac, it’s the same beef, the same patty, and the same thickness. The reason people think it has become smaller may be that the source manufacturer has made it smaller; I think that is possible. But there is another, even more likely possibility: it doesn’t meet the Golden Quality Standard (the Golden Quality Standard means that if a burger is unsold for more than 10 minutes, or a portion of chips for more than 7 minutes, it is thrown away). The meat is at its biggest right after it is made; when it is kept in the warming cabinet, it gets smaller and smaller. As the moisture evaporates, the meat darkens or dries out and shrinks.

◉ Mix & Match, now raised to 14.9 yuan.

Yu Yang: I seem to remember that many years ago, Mix & Match was 11.9 yuan, then it went up to 12.9 yuan and 13.9 yuan, and now it has become 14.9 yuan.

Jiang Ke: Yes, Mix & Match is essentially McDonald’s cheapest set meal, because ordering a single Double Hamburger à la carte would cost 23 yuan? If you order Mix & Match, it only costs 14.9 yuan, which still sounds like a very good value.

Li Ye: I know why I used to think, as a child, that a single Grilled Chicken Burger was enough to fill me up, because I was small and my stomach was small, so I could feel full. Now I think it has got smaller: on the one hand, it may really have got smaller, and on the other, I may have grown up.

Why Are McDonald’s Toilets Disappearing?

Li Ye: And in recent years I’ve noticed that many McDonald’s stores no longer have toilets, and you have to go to the public toilets in office buildings. Has this also been done to save costs?

Jiang Ke: Yes, in the past, people’s impression of McDonald’s was: wow, this restaurant is so big, there are so many seats, and it’s so clean. Now, because McDonald’s needs to tap into lower-tier markets and open more stores, its positioning may have changed from the more flagship feel it once had to being like an everyday necessity, and store sizes have been scaled down accordingly. Previously, the dining area plus the front counter area might have covered five or six hundred square metres; now it may cover just over 200 square metres.

For very small stores, it is not possible to provide a toilet. And for stores that originally had toilets, keeping them open would require more staff to clean them. If they are not cleaned promptly, customers can make a complaint. McDonald’s also has standards for toilet cleaning: they have to be checked at least once every 15 minutes, which places quite a high demand on staffing. So removing toilets is also part of its efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency.

◉ Some McDonald’s stores used to have toilets, but they are no longer open to the public. Image source: Jiang Ke

More Stores, Fewer Store Managers?

Yu Yang: Who is responsible for arranging in-store staffing at McDonald’s during peak periods?

Jiang Ke: Staffing arrangements at McDonald’s are quite complex, because McDonald’s has not only shift managers but also full-time employees, with many part-time employees under them; it is a very complicated staffing system.

McDonald’s has a position known as a rostering specialist. We put the rota together once a week, and all staffing arrangements are adjusted according to turnover — that is, we schedule staff on the basis of the forecast turnover for each day and each time slot next week. For example, if tomorrow’s forecast turnover is 20,000 yuan, we calculate the labour hours required from the turnover, say 150 labour hours. Then, apart from the shift manager on duty at the time and the full-time employees who work fixed shifts, we work out which part-time employees can be rostered. The rota will obviously differ across time slots: for instance, if the forecast turnover for one hour at midday is 3,000 yuan, that 3,000 has to be matched to 3,000 labour hours. In short, turnover corresponds to labour hours, which in turn correspond to full-time and part-time employees.

So for a store, the variable is turnover. You can forecast its turnover using historical data, but it is actually very difficult to forecast accurately, especially when unexpected events occur. For example, if there is a school next door and it is holding its sports day, this kind of thing can still happen quite often. Moreover, the forecast labour efficiency is calculated on the basis that one person has to do more than one person’s workload; there is a concept of a labour efficiency ratio. It stipulates that one person apparently has to do the work of 1.1 or 1.2 people, and this is the minimum standard. And even if one person is only doing one person’s share of the work, the standard is still set by the company, so it is hard to say whether that standard is set very low or very high.

Li Ye: You can refer to the 90-second serving standard.

Jiang Ke: Right, this is a very important metric for overall restaurant operations, and it is linked to bonuses and so on.

Yu Yang: So when you are overwhelmed during peak periods, have you ever requested more staff?

Jiang Ke: Yes, if it gets too busy during peak periods, you can say that you need extra staff tomorrow or on next week’s Friday, and let the rostering specialist know. He will then base the rota on whether your turnover is really higher.

Yu Yang: How mobile are part-time staff? For example, does a part-time employee tend to work at one store consistently, or do they move between several stores?

Jiang Ke: The current emphasis is on the concept of shared employees; it is not just part-time staff — full-time staff may also be shared across several nearby stores. If one of these stores asks you to work there, you are expected to go. For example, if there is a newly opened store and it may still have relatively few employees, nearby stores will provide staff support to it.

In fact, it is not only ordinary employees; managers and even senior managers are also shared in this way. This sharing concept is called NGO within the McDonald’s system, meaning shared store managers and shared employees. How exactly does it work? Previously, each store had a store manager. With McDonald’s rapid expansion in recent years — for example, in 2025 its target is to add 1,000 stores in China — my thinking at the time (when I joined) was that 1,000 stores would mean a great many store managers. I assumed its management trainee programme should be reasonably solid, so I joined. But in the end I found that the number of store managers had even become smaller than before; one store manager has to manage several stores. This is a shared store manager, and the title for such a store manager has also become “super store manager”. There are more stores, but fewer store managers.

Yu Yang: So have there been any changes in terms of pay?

Jiang Ke: I’ve heard that taking on an additional store adds one or two thousand yuan to your pay; managing a single store probably pays just over 10,000 yuan. But it varies from region to region.

Li Ye: So when it is reducing the number of people in the “store manager” role, has it then added new roles below, to take on some of their previous responsibilities? After all, a super store manager has to manage many stores at the same time.

Jiang Ke: So it involves adjustments at every level of the NGO system. A super store manager has to manage several stores, but if you look at the workload of a single store manager before, it is unlikely that one person could cover all the duties. So those duties have to be delegated down to other management levels in the store. Below the store manager are monthly-salaried managers, who take on more of the work that used to be done by the store manager. The work that monthly-salaried managers used to do is passed down a level, so shift managers (hourly-paid managers) have to take on some of it. So overall, everyone’s workload has increased.

◉ Nowadays, the trays on McDonald’s bins are more likely to pile up than before. Image source: Jiang Ke

Yu Yang: It is really still a strategy to cut costs and improve efficiency, and the roles being reduced are middle and senior management roles. Since store managers’ pay is comparatively higher, reducing the number of store managers and pushing work down to lower-paid shift managers lowers overall costs.

Jiang Ke: Yes, if you open a new store and hire a store manager, the salary alone might be 10,000 yuan, but if an existing store manager covers it in addition, you only need to pay them an extra one or two thousand yuan, and the store can still be kept running, which saves labour costs. Also, in the past the rostering work was assigned to each store; later they felt that if every store had a role responsible for rostering, labour costs would be high. Now, in a region with, say, 20 stores, they set up one rostering specialist role, which sounds as if it could save on staff. But in practice, first of all, the specialist cannot build the rota around people’s individual characteristics; they can only roster according to the information in the system, so most rotas do not meet the actual operational needs of the restaurants.

Yu Yang: It feels as if McDonald’s is taking an operations research approach, trying to maximise efficiency and profits through macro-level adjustments. But in the actual work process, once the rostering specialist has built the rota, do you in the store have to carry out another round of adjustments, which may even take extra time?

Jiang Ke: In fact, from a scientific standpoint, having a rostering specialist may be better. But in practice, the specialist can only roster employees according to the tags in the system for that employee. The system records what courses the employee has completed in McDonald’s learning system — for example, making drinks, frying chips, wrapping burgers — which is taken to be equivalent to having those skills, so the rostering specialist can assign them to those roles.

McDonald’s requires new employees to master the four or five basic roles, possibly within ten days. But in reality it is unlikely that they can master them in ten days, especially part-time employees. Employees are expected to have absorbed the knowledge on paper, and they also mark it as “Completed” in the system, but in reality they may not have mastered these skills; there is an information gap. The rostering specialist does not know about this information gap and can only roster according to the system tags, assuming that having studied it means being able to do it. So in quite extreme cases, a rota may be produced in which no one can wrap burgers.

So the so-called management in each restaurant has to spare extra time and energy to make adjustments to work that should really have been handled by these specialists. But the system does not allocate these hours to the managers; they can only squeeze time out of their own jobs to complete the extra work. Moreover, this work is not compensated accordingly, because the money for it has been set aside separately to pay the specialists and deducted from the restaurant’s labour costs.

Yu Yang: As you said earlier that many metrics affect bonuses, are there corresponding KPI requirements? For example, does turnover have to reach a certain level before there is a bonus?

Jiang Ke: Right, bonuses are a management tool, because there is nothing else you can use to manage people. And then the bonus depends on, for example, whether the restaurant’s turnover meets the target; it also covers the restaurant’s overall complaint rate and product wastage rate. These are all within the scope of the bonus assessment, set out in a very detailed table.

Yu Yang: So for you, controlling wastage in the store is crucial. How does wastage generally occur?

Jiang Ke: If a store follows the golden-quality standard, a lot of things will be discarded, for example chips, meat and so on; anything that does not meet the golden-quality standard has to be discarded. But in practice, if the standard is relaxed, wastage will be lower. For example, if the chips have been fried and then left for half an hour and are completely uneatable, that portion is discarded as wastage. Patties that have been cooked and left for a long time are also discarded. Different restaurants may have different practical standards; in principle everything should be discarded, and then recorded in the system: how many slices of beef were discarded and roughly how many portions of chips.

◉ Chips and burgers thrown into the bin. Image source: Qingtai Yinwu

Li Ye: Could this be considered food waste? Is there much of this kind of food waste?

Jiang Ke: This kind of food waste is not actually very much each day, by this restaurant’s standard. It is generally calculated in terms of semi-finished products; it is not a matter of discarding a few burgers, but of discarding a few pieces of meat. For example, if the meat is controlled well, it might only be a dozen or so pieces, while chips might be a bit more; even this is because it is not fully following the golden-quality standard. If the golden-quality standard were followed, the amount discarded would be enormous.

◉ The store has strict rules about staff meals and the handling of leftover food. Image source: Qingtai Yinwu

Yu Yang: I saw that McDonald’s had previously run a soft-sell advert about its farming practices, inviting some farmers to come and talk about how the produce is grown, and then telling you how, behind the scenes of the supply chain, it brings fresh food from the land to the table. But in reality, the raw materials that stores receive are all semi-finished products; they are no longer the same concept as “fresh” in a traditional restaurant.

Jiang Ke: Right, because all the vegetables are cut and vacuum-packed before they are delivered. And no matter how healthy the ingredients are advertised to be before processing, the moment we look at the ingredient list, it is a very, very long one, with a lot of additives used to retain the texture. No matter how fresh its raw materials are advertised to be, no matter how premium the potatoes are, the chips contain a lot of food additives.

Li Ye: So promoting the raw materials as healthy and fresh is a bit like equivocating. How could ultra-processed foods with so many food additives possibly be healthy? The way they are made is unhealthy in itself.

◉ An advertisement for the regenerative agriculture programme on a McDonald’s tray.

Yu Yang: But I think there is quite a contradiction here: on the one hand, our resistance to pre-prepared food shows that we have a desire for fresh food. On the other hand, we can also accept ultra-processed foods such as McDonald’s. We have two attitudes towards food.

Jiang Ke: This is, I suppose, people’s choice between flavour and efficiency in food. Cooking for yourself every day must take a lot of time; if you have a McDonald’s, you can get it in 90 seconds. That is really convenient. This may also be one of the wonderful things that modernisation has brought.

McDonald’s Smart Systems: Are They Really Smart?

Jiang Ke: Speaking of modernisation, McDonald’s has a lot of smart systems, but in practice I would only say they are of limited use. It has a digitised forecasting system called the Smart Production System, which is installed in every store. Every 15 minutes there is a forecast, estimating the next 15 minutes’ turnover and what customers are likely to order, so staff can prepare the food in advance. For example, if the system forecasts that someone will order a spicy leg burger in the next 15 minutes, there should already be a chicken fillet for a spicy leg burger in my storage. But as we know, all such information systems are always a step behind, and they forecast on the assumption of having more staff. The system may assume that there are five people in the store at the time and run its simulation on that basis, but in reality there may only be two; if they then have to meet the forecast, it becomes very difficult.

So it sounds as if this system must cost a lot, but as far as I know no store actually uses it. Everyone just works from their own experience. Employees will ask the manager how many chicken fillets need to be fried, and the manager will simply do a rough estimate — three to fry, say — rather than working according to the system.

Besides this Smart Production System and the rostering system, McDonald’s also has an ordering system and many other systems. Creating these standardised systems means that the demands on people become lower, and the aim is to reduce people’s workload. But in practice, first of all the systems are not that easy to use, the forecasts are not that accurate, and the standards are not that strict. If there were a dedicated supervisor checking whether staff were producing according to the Smart Production System, and a very strict oversight system in place, staff would probably use it more.

◉ The two panels that McDonald’s staff need to check: the left-hand one is for delivery, the right-hand one for dine-in and takeaway.

Li Ye: This system is like placing everyone in their own niche: the manager has to learn the Smart Production System and manage how each of your employees produces. The person who fries chips has to fry them to the golden-quality standard, so that it is possible to hold people to account later, which makes management easier. But in fact, people are the biggest variable.

Jiang Ke: Yes, the goal of designing the system is not to rely on people, and to eliminate as far as possible these non-standardised variables. But the reality is that each manager will have their own standard. Some managers feel that chips that have been left for too long should not be sold, while others feel that they still look fine and, not wanting to create wastage, sell them. So it really depends on the individual; in practice, because of costs and the human factor, it is difficult to implement fully.

Li Ye: This feels a little like turning people into an extension of the system, or into the system’s flesh, but at present it seems hard for people to mesh with the system.

Jiang Ke: Yes. But sometimes it can still play a certain role. For example, the ordering system is easier to forecast and, compared with other systems, somewhat easier to use. Like your AI, to meet demands that conform to real-world standards, it needs a lot of data training and continuous calculation, and the cost is high as well. It is not the case that once a system is built it can be used indefinitely; the calculation methods need to be updated and iterated so that the future can be predicted more accurately. I actually think McDonald’s may have also found that people do not use it much, so its investment in this has not been that high either, but its digitisation process has been ongoing.

Yu Yang: Actually, McDonald’s began its digitisation quite early. I previously read a book that said McDonald’s had begun investing in this kind of digitised product line as early as the 1950s, developing in parallel with computer technology.

Jiang Ke: Yes, McDonald’s management is really very advanced. It may not be that useful for now, but we should acknowledge the advanced aspects that distinguish it from other food service businesses, and its real commitment to using systems to keep things under control. For example, with the ordering system, if it can order suitable quantities of stock, the restaurant’s operations will be fine. So it is certainly more efficient than simply relying on people; it is just that at present it is not yet as efficient as imagined.

◉ The book <i>McDonald’s: Exploring the Miracle of the Golden Arches</i> describes how McDonald’s came into being amid the mobility-driven modernisation of the United States, and the history of its development from a drive-in restaurant into a global fast-food giant.

McDonald’s in Memory

Yu Yang: If it had been the 1990s or the 2000s, I would have found McDonald’s a truly wonderful place. When I was little, I used to pull my grandma along, making her take me to McDonald’s, and there used to be indoor play areas where you could leave the children, and some classmates would have their birthday parties there. But when I go to McDonald’s now, I feel a bit stifled. Perhaps when I go to McDonald’s to sort out a meal, it is actually because my life is being squeezed; I don’t have time to cook.

And I think many things are linked together. When I go to McDonald’s as a consumer, I feel that my time is being squeezed, and in fact, my demand for quick service is also passed on to the workers, who naturally face very fast-paced, high-intensity work.

◉ McDonald’s now also hosts party events such as birthday parties, but staff say not many people book them anymore.

Jiang Ke: I feel this is a transformation for McDonald’s: it has become even more focused on being fast food. The previous sense of companionship and togetherness has shifted from the in-store facilities to the internet. Online, there is a great deal of discussion about Maimen, and every time a new product is launched, many people try it, then go online to write reports and interact with fellow fans — it feels like a shared memory.

Li Ye: When I was little, you could see lots of people doing their homework at McDonald’s. Now everyone is sitting there with a laptop or on their phone, either in meetings, working in sales, or selling insurance — all working while at McDonald’s. You can also see delivery riders, often so exhausted that they lie face down on a table, waiting for their next order. Combined with the dim yellow lighting inside the store, the whole place gives off a lifeless feeling, and you just want to leave as soon as you’ve bought.

Yu Yang: When McDonald’s first entered Hong Kong or Beijing, it was actually a symbol of family-centred life. In the past two years, because dreamcore has been quite popular and there has been nostalgia among people born in the 1990s for their childhood, McDonald’s has also become a recurring symbol of nostalgia. For example, the old decorative Clown Uncle and the former 9.9 yuan coupons have all been dug up and turned into a kind of memory.

Jiang Ke: So why do people like McDonald’s? I think nostalgia accounts for a large part, even if many burgers later turn out to be tastier than its own, it will still be difficult to take McDonald’s current market position.

Li Ye: Yes, and I have a feeling that the fast-food chains I remember were on a different model from other restaurants. The kitchen was visible, and McDonald’s was an open space, so you could see the staff inside. When I was little, I even thought they were robots; it felt as though everyone was constantly frying chips and packing burgers. Surely all this work must have been done by robots? Otherwise, who would keep frying chips?

Jiang Ke: Working there, I feel like a robot myself — indeed a robot that has to handle more complex things than ordinary robots, because it demands both a robot’s precision and a person’s flexible responsiveness.

– This is Foodthink’s 828th original article –

Editor: Li Ye

Layout: Xiaoshu

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