McDonald's Shifting Restaurants Towards Franchising

McDonald’s revenue has fallen in recent years. While it stood at $28.1 billion in 2013 it fell to $22.8 billion in 2017. The number of restaurants climbed in the same time from 34,500 to 37.200, but the fast food corporation is running less of its restaurants wholly company owned, while the share of joints run as franchises has grown.

The share of directly run restaurants made up 19.1 percent in 2012, in 2017 the share had dropped to 8.4 percent. The below infographic shows that this has reduced the number of employees McDonald’s officially has on its books, from 440,000 in 2012 to 235,000 in 2017, without really downscaling its overall business operation.