An update from McDonald’s UK and Ireland CEO

In March we took the decision to temporarily close our restaurants in the UK and Ireland for the safety of our employees and customers. Recently, we began working through a potential and limited reopening and I wanted to share with you an update that we shared with our franchisees and 135,000 employees earlier today.

As part of our reopening planning, we have been listening to you and our employees, and we have worked closely with UK and Irish governments and trade bodies to help ensure we do this responsibly. We have deliberately taken our time, we want to get this right.

We sought the views of our employees as we worked through our reopening planning, to give us all confidence in the measures we are introducing to keep them safe. We understand everyone has been affected by this global crisis differently and therefore when it comes to returning to work, our people will be encouraged to make the right decision, based on their personal circumstances.

This week we have been running controlled tests to explore the safest way to reopen our restaurants. To give us all confidence in the new operational measures we are introducing to keep you and our employees safe, we asked our employees for their thoughts, have incorporated much of their feedback and will continue to listen and learn. The tests have proven successful and I will outline the ways in which we will slowly, but safely, begin to resume serving McDonald’s customers again.

On May 13^th, we will reopen 15 of our restaurants in the UK; this will be in a limited capacity with delivery only. The restaurants involved will be announced next week as we work through inviting our employees back to work and supporting our delivery partners to prepare for our gradual return.

New safety measures in place

As you know, McDonald’s already has high standards for cleanliness and routine cleaning of our restaurants has always been in place. We will increase how often these procedures are completed and provide all employees with updated training on restaurant cleanliness and sanitisation. All restaurants will be deep cleaned before reopening.

We will introduce the following measures to help keep our people safe:

Limited menu and hours

We will return with much smaller teams in our restaurants and as a result will be returning with a limited menu. This will support social distancing in our kitchens, whilst still providing many McDonald’s iconic menu items. Full details of our limited menu can be found here.

To reduce the complexities in our kitchens at menu changeover, we will temporarily not be serving breakfast and will open from 11am to 10pm. As we reopen we will explore the ways in which to help our employees safely change over menus and we will reintroduce our breakfast menu as soon as we can.

McDelivery

We are working with our delivery partners in Uber Eats and Just Eat to ensure the wellbeing of our delivery drivers as well as our employees. Perspex screens, sanitising stations and new social distancing procedures will be introduced as we continue the contact free collections and drop offs we closed with back in March.

Serving the community

To date we have distributed over 400 tonnes of food to charities and food banks around the UK and Ireland and we will continue to support the communities in which we operate as we reopen.

Thank you

The last few weeks have been difficult for all of us and I hope you, your friends and your families are staying safe. We are very grateful to those of you who have taken a moment to share messages and stay in touch.

When we return it will be different as we all adjust to this new normal. I want to apologise in advance if our first wave of reopened restaurants does not serve your area. Rest assured, we are working hard to reopen more restaurants, but I am adamant this must be at the right pace with the wellbeing of our employees, suppliers and customers front of mind. Thank you for your patience.

Slowly, but safely we will return to towns and cities across the UK and Ireland and thank you for your continued support as we work through this crisis. We will continue to keep you updated via email, our website and our social media channels.

In the meantime, stay safe and we will see you soon.

Best regards,
Paul Pomroy
Chief Executive Officer, McDonald’s UK and Ireland