McDonald’s is looking to attract more millennials by teaming up with charities

There is one thing McDonald’s desperately needs right now: McMillennials.

As the company’s sales continue to decline, it has asked several ad agencies to come up with a campaign that will help it attract the most elusive customer of all: the millennial.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the purveyor of caloric hamburgers and fries wants to rebrand itself as a good corporate citizen. It will do so by launching a partnership with a charity that “engages millennials to support [it] by speaking to their philanthropic priorities and leveraging their behaviors and habits.”

As media and ad companies compete for the fast food restaurant’s money, a law professor from Chicago has thrown her hat into the ring with a proposal. According to Heather Whitney, a Bigelow teaching fellow at the University of Chicago, McDonald’s should start by spending its money on higher wages for employees.

Whitney’s proposal would see McDonald’s teaming up with Fast Food Forward, a campaign to raise pay for fast food workers across the US. Thanks to the partnership, McDonald’s would become a “newfound conscious capitalist” – a reformed version of its former self, paying its workers $11 an hour. As part of the charitable partnership, McDonald’s would fund the Fast Food Forward campaign to raise the minimum wage and in return receive a Fast Food Forward seal of approval. Of course, the partnership would be promoted with a campaign.

Its tagline? “Eating at McDonald’s buys better jobs.”

By now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with millennials. According to Whitney, the younger generations have been avoiding McDonald’s because it gets them down.

“Imagine [McDonald’s] research shows that millennials find eating at McDonald’s depressing. Yes, the food is unhealthy, but a 1,285-calorie Chipotle burrito isn’t so great either and Chipotle is doing well,” writes Whitney, in a blog post for On Labor.

“No, what is particularly depressing about McDonald’s is the feeling that the people behind the counter, flipping burgers and taking orders, have dead-end jobs where they’re treated poorly. This feeling is a big turnoff for millennials who want to buy a feeling – fresh, happy, ethical – more than a meal.”

McDonald’s workers are among some of the lowest-paid workers in the US. Many of them earn minimum wage. On average, their pay is $9.15. That’s about a dollar less than the White House proposed minimum wage of $10.10.

In October, McDonald’s recorded 12 straight months of declining sales in the US. The drop has been blamed mainly on young Americans. Visits among customers aged 19 to 21 years fell by 13% since 2011, while the visits from the 22-37 age group had not grown, according to Technomic.

McDonald’s has tried a few things to lure millennials into its stores, like custom-built burgers. This was both an effort to improve the reputation of McDonald’s hamburgers, after they were recently voted the worst burgers in America, as well as to portray the company as tech-savvy, because the burgers could be ordered on an iPad. However, the effort was fruitless. By December, restaurant sales in the US fell 4.6%.

As a result, McDonald’s is hoping to gain some traction with millennials by doing some good.

Could McDonald’s go the way of McScrooge?

There is a way for McDonald’s to get on that feelgood train, argues Whitney: by helping to provide for its workers.

“We are at a point in time when our basic understanding of the role of corporations in the world is open for reflection and revision,” Whitney told the Guardian. Playing up the need for reflection, she suggests that to attract millennials, McDonald’s needs to “become the Christmas-morning Ebenezer Scrooge of fast food”.

Ghost of Christmas Past: In 2014, McDonald’s workers have regularly protested their low pay, asking for a higher hourly wage. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

For the company, 2014 has been a year fraught with protests for higher wages. McDonald’s workers could often be found walking out of stores and joining in acts of civil disobedience to draw attention to their low pay. Hundreds risked arrest to make the point: whatever it takes to get that higher pay. It wasn’t good for business: McDonald’s soon reported a fall in sales.

One doesn’t need to look far for the Ghost of Christmas Future. Walmart, where workers are paid similarly low wages, has charitable efforts of its own. In 2013, Walmart says it donated more than 571m pounds of food to local food banks and organizations like Feeding America. The retailer’s critics say that a portion of Walmart’s low-paid workers rely on similar charity to supplement their income and put food on the table.

The company has also seen some charitable efforts turn inwards, with employees running food drives for other employees struggling to make ends meet. But the workers on the receiving end of these efforts who do rely on food banks say they would rather get higher pay.

“We don’t want your food bins or your bake sales. We work hard and we are not looking for charity,” Cantare Davunt, a Walmart worker, said last year. “What we want is for you to pay us fair wage ... so that we can pay for our own groceries.”

To avoid similar criticism, McDonald’s could chose Fast Food Forward for its charitable partnership. The question is, will it do so? The company did not respond to Guardian’s request for comment.

Ghost of Christmas Future: Walmart. Photograph: LUCY NICHOLSON/ LUCY NICHOLSON/Reuters/Corbis

“Raising pay is good for everyone. It’ll help workers, it’ll boost the economy,” Kendall Fells, the organizing director of Fast Food Forward, told the Guardian. “And McDonald’s could absolutely help itself by listening to its workers’ calls for $15 and union rights.”

So far, McDonald’s maintains that its wages are fair.

“We believe we pay fair and competitive wages,” McDonald’s CEO, Don Thomson, told the shareholders in May 2014.

At $11 an hour, Whitney’s proposal calls for the new wages to fall somewhere between the current McDonald’s hourly pay and the $15 demanded by the workers.

Update: McDonald’s and its franchisees “support paying our valued employees fair wages aligned with a competitive marketplace,” Becca Hary, director of global media relations at McDonald’s told the Guardian over email. She added that any wage increases should be implemented over time so that the impact is manageable.

As for doing good and connecting with millennials, that’s nothing new for the company, she said.

“We’re always looking for great creative ideas that will resonate with our customers and giving back to our communities is part of how we do business,” wrote Hary. “Since 1955, McDonald’s and its franchisees have always cared about making a difference in our communities, which includes support of Ronald McDonald House Charities and other worthy causes.”

