OAK BROOK, Ill. -- McDonald's Corp. is urging U.S. restaurant owners to take the unusual step of opening on Christmas Day to deliver higher December sales, according to an AdvertisingAge report.
The request would be a break from the company tradition of closing on major holidays.
"Starting with Thanksgiving, ensure your restaurants are open throughout the holidays," Jim Johannesen, COO for McDonald's USA, wrote in a Nov. 8 memo to franchisees--one of two obtained by the publication.
"Our largest holiday opportunity as a system is Christmas Day. Last year, [company-operated] restaurants that opened on Christmas averaged $5,500 in sales," Johannesen said.
"The decision to open our restaurants on Christmas is in the hands of our owner/operators," Heather Oldani, a spokesperson for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's, told Reuters in a separate report.
Don Thompson took over as CEO at McDonald's in July and has the difficult task of growing sales from last year's strong results in a significantly more competitive environment. McDonald's monthly global sales at established restaurants fell for the first time in nine years in October, but unexpectedly rebounded in November, said the news agency.
The November surprise was partly due to a 2.5% rise in sales at U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months.
"Our November results were driven, in part, by our Thanksgiving Day performance," Johannesen wrote in a Dec. 12 memo to franchisees.
Oldani said 1,200 more McDonald's restaurants were open on Thanksgiving this year versus last year.
"It's an act of desperation. The franchisees are not happy," Richard Adams, a former McDonald's franchisee who now advises the chain's owner/operators, told Reuters.
The push to open on the holidays goes against McDonald's cultural history, said Adams. In his first published operations manual, McDonald's founder Ray Kroc said the company would close on Thanksgiving and Christmas to give employees time with their families, Adams said.
"We opened for breakfast on Thanksgiving the last couple years I was a franchisee. It was easy to get kids to work on Thanksgiving because they want to get away from their family, but not on Christmas," Adams said.
McDonald's is the world's leading global foodservice retailer with more than 34,000 locations serving more than 69 million customers in 119 countries each day.
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