McDonald’s > Next: what it means to build what’s next together

The Orquest Team at the McDonald’s Worldwide Convention 2026

This June in Las Vegas, McDonald’s gathered its teams across the globe. More than 14,000 people. Every major market. And a message from CEO Chris Kempczinski that framed the next chapter of the brand with unusual clarity: McDonald’s > Next.

We were in the room. For the third time.

What Next means

The ambition Kempczinski laid out is simple to state and hard to deliver: be the customer’s first choice, every time. Not for most markets. For all of them. Close the gap between where McDonald’s is and where it wants to be. On quality, on value, on the kind of hospitality that makes people feel seen.

“For most it’s an unequivocal ‘yes,’ every time. For some, ‘not yet.’ And ‘not yet’ is something we refuse to live with.”

That words — not yet — is an operational statement as much as a strategic one. The gap doesn’t close in a boardroom. It closes on the floor, shift by shift, restaurant by restaurant. And that’s exactly where our work lives.

A partnership built on the same conviction

Orquest has been part of McDonald’s operations across more than 40 markets for years. Not as a vendor. As a partner in the work that happens before the customer walks in: the forecasting, the scheduling, the compliance, the coverage decisions that determine whether the crew on a Tuesday lunch shift can actually deliver what the brand promises.

What has kept that partnership growing across markets as different as Spain, Qatar, Cyprus, South Africa, Jordan and Latin America is not feature parity. It’s a shared conviction: that the people on the floor are the motor. That operations built around them perform better. That getting the schedule right is not an administrative task, it’s the foundation everything else is built on.

“The heart of the business is in the kitchen, in production, and if we can align how we position employees, how we do scheduling based on product demand, that’s the ideal world. With Orquest, we’re achieving it.“
— Darío Luksemberg, HR Corporate Director, Arcos Dorados

What 40+ markets actually proves

The results across the McDonald’s restaurants are consistent. At Arcos Dorados, the world’s largest McDonald’s franchisee, labour costs down 0.5–1% across 2,000+ restaurants — over $2 million annually. Scheduling time dropped from six to eight hours per manager per week to under 45 minutes. At McDonald’s Spain,labour costs fell 1.7% and customer wait times dropped by 26%. At McDonald’s Qatar, overtime reduced by 94%. At McDonald’s Cyprus, zero non-compliance issues before a schedule is published.

Each of those markets operates under different labour legislation, different contract structures, different demand patterns. The standard holds across all of them because the solution was built for that complexity from day one, not adapted for it later.

The crew at the centre

One of the clearest threads in Kempczinski’s message in Las Vegas was this: as more of the customer journey becomes automated, the moments of human connection become more valuable, not less. The bar for hospitality goes up.

We agree. And we’d add: that hospitality starts with whether the right person is on the floor in the first place. A crew member scheduled to actual demand, rather than a fixed template, is a crew member who can be present. A manager who isn’t spending a full day on the roster is a manager who’s leading their team.

Good scheduling doesn’t replace human judgment. It creates the conditions for it.

McDonald’s > Next starts now. From where we stand, the work has been underway for a while: across 40+ markets, millions of shifts, and a partnership we’re proud to keep building.

Orquest runs scheduling across McDonald’s in 40+ markets. If you’d like to understand what that looks like for your network, let’s talk.