A Lot on His Plate


A year ago Steve Easterbrook took over McDonald’s helm. His mission was to bring back the sizzle. It’s still early days, but so far, so good by Susan Smith photo by Sarah Brook


TEVE EASTERBROOK developed a fondness for McDonald’s as an 11-year-old student at the Watford Grammar School for Boys in his native England, when he and a friend went gamboling about the suburb of Harrow in northwest London. “We used to go off with three or four quid in our


pocket,” he told The Guardian in 2008. “That would cover our train fare, mooching around Harrow, and going to McDonald’s.” At that time, though he loved the shakes and fries, it’s doubtful that


he envisioned one day becoming CEO of the world’s largest-revenue restaurant chain. But that’s what happened on March 1, 2015, when Easterbrook, by then a McDonald’s veteran, replaced Don Thompson, who had run the company since 2012. Easterbrook took the helm at a troubled time. With 36,258 restau- rants worldwide and annual revenue of US$27.4 billion in 2014, the


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