Business Resilience
We take action to help ensure we are building a better business and a more trusted brand for generations to come by being resilient and agile in the face of challenging circumstances beyond our control.
Our Strategy
We work to anticipate risks and help risk owners develop robust mitigation plans through our evolving enterprise risk management (ERM) framework, business continuity governance and crisis management processes. Unexpected events and evolving issues impact our people and communities, disrupt operations and supply chains, damage restaurants and compromise information security. To proactively respond to, and help mitigate the impact of, such challenges, we have continuity plans that help us protect our business and consistently deliver the quality food and experiences our customers know and love.
Our business resilience strategy covers four key areas:
- Governance and oversight of our approach: Our ERM framework identifies, assesses and prioritizes potential strategic, financial and reputational risks that could possibly have a sustained impact on our Company. Our Business Continuity Governance framework helps us prepare for potential disruption in a consistent and connected way. We are always looking to incorporate new learnings and to enhance strategic decision-making.
- Supply chain resilience: We think and act holistically when it comes to driving resilience now and for the future, considering the whole McDonald’s System. Effective supply chain management is vital to our success and, as such, we are proactively expanding the capabilities, partnerships and technologies to anticipate, understand, mitigate and respond to risk. In the long term, increasing our supply chain sustainability will be instrumental to ensuring its future resilience.
- Technology resilience: Increased reliance on technology throughout our organization means our ability to respond quickly in the event of a disruption is vital to business continuity. Our GTIO – SMO – Service Continuity team identifies potential risks, then implements solutions and contingencies to mitigate impacts.
- Crisis management: Our Global Crisis Management program takes an “all hazards” approach across the enterprise to allow us to respond to enterprise-level disruptions in a more rapid and coordinated way, reducing impact and protecting the brand. A dedicated and trained team representing all functions and segments supports McDonald’s overall preparedness and responsiveness – connecting to and complementing existing response capabilities and protocols across markets and functions.
See our latest Purpose & Impact Report on the Goal Performance & Reporting page for updates on our progress.
Our Approach
Governance & Oversight
McDonald’s ERM framework is designed to identify, assess and prioritize strategic, financial and reputational risks that could possibly have a sustained impact on our Company. We periodically review it and incorporate our learning to enhance strategic decision-making.
Management is responsible for ERM framework design and execution, leveraging internal risk committees comprising cross-functional leadership. Management meets regularly to evaluate and prioritize risk in the context of our Accelerating the Arches strategy. The framework reaches our CEO, Board and/or committees, as appropriate.
Our Board has oversight of the ERM framework, both as a full Board and through its standing committees. This involves regular interaction between our Board and senior management regarding risk exposures and mitigation effects as they relate to our business strategy, operations and values. The Board also annually reviews strategic and enterprise risks and considers, among other items, our mitigation and overall strategy, competitive landscape, capital structure and management succession planning. Internal auditors also support risk identification and monitoring.
Along with our ERM framework, our Business Continuity Governance framework helps provide increased governance infrastructure to support cross-functional transparency and consistency, as well as greater resilience to disruption through proactive continuity planning and scenario-based exercises.
Supply Chain Resilience
A resilient supply chain helps ensure our restaurants can reliably serve customers, even when unexpected events occur. We work across the McDonald’s System – the Company, its Franchisees and suppliers – and with industry partners to strengthen our ability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to and recover from disruptions across our global network.
We establish the data, tools and processes that enable earlier risk detection, timely decision-making and contingency activation with suppliers, aiming to avoid restaurant-level outages. At the same time, we aim to deliver responsible sourcing programs that drive lasting, meaningful outcomes on the environmental and social issues that are critical to the Company and that help contribute to the long-term stability and availability of key ingredients.
By combining strong operational preparedness with efforts that reinforce the long-term health of our supply base, we aim to build a reliable supply chain that supports quality, value and trust for our customers.
Technology Resilience
Increasing reliance on technologies means our ability to restore business-critical functions – and prevent impacts to them – in the event of disruption is a significant priority. The Service Continuity team, which sits within Global Technology, partners with McDonald’s Business, Security, Risk and Infrastructure teams.
The Service Continuity team evaluates infrastructure and application criticality from the standpoint of customer, financial, operational, reputational and legal impact in the event of extended service disruption, thus determining the level of resiliency controls and recovery strategies needed for key systems.
Service Continuity supports integration of available technology to meet the needs of McDonald’s business and to help the Company reliably function on a global basis.
Crisis Management
An enterprise-wide crisis management program must be built on a rigorous “all hazards” framework that anticipates, withstands and adapts to the full spectrum of threats, safeguarding the enterprise across its most critical dimensions: operational continuity, financial stability and reputational integrity. At its core, it is a disciplined lifecycle of identifying emerging risks, rapidly assessing enterprise impact, executing coordinated mitigation and response and driving swift, resilient recovery.
This capability is reinforced through comprehensive, cross-functional training of crisis leaders and response teams across all business units, markets and geographies, ensuring clarity of roles, decision authority and escalation pathways. Guided by the principle of responding at the lowest competent level while informing at the highest, the model enables timely, localized action with enterprise-wide situational awareness and executive alignment.
Equally critical, the program institutionalizes continuous improvement through formal after-action assessments following incidents and exercises, transforming lessons learned into strengthened capabilities, sharper readiness and greater organizational resilience, ultimately protecting brand trust and sustaining long-term shareholder value.
Related Topics
Stakeholder Engagement & Public Policy
Against the backdrop of a continually changing external landscape, we engage with key stakeholder groups on issues that are relevant to the Company and where we believe McDonald’s can have the greatest impact.
Impact Strategy & Governance
We are taking action on the issues that are most important to our business, and that will help create long-term sustainable value.
See our performance highlights and read our latest Purpose & Impact Report
