The challenge
As the world's largest and most recognizable restaurant franchiser, McDonald’s is committed to delivering a consistent and high-quality experience to billions of customers served. Behind every meal served is a well-trained team of employees, equipped with the knowledge and tools to meet the brand’s rigorous operational and service standards.
Before BigMarker, McDonald’s franchise education group faced the challenges common to large, distributed restaurant networks: delivering consistent, up-to-date training across hundreds of locations, minimizing disruptions to day-to-day operations, and engaging employees with content that was both relevant and easy to access. The Learning & Development (L&D) team needed a centralized platform that could streamline their training efforts and scale seamlessly across the entire country. At the same time, it had to be intuitive for employees to use, flexible enough to accommodate different roles and learning styles, and robust enough to support live interaction and real-time feedback.
The solution
To empower employees at scale, McDonald’s turned to BigMarker. Since 2019, the company has used BigMarker’s webinar platform to deliver live, engaging training sessions for restaurant staff, managers, and operations professionals across its 750+ locations. Over the years, the training program has evolved from a few monthly sessions to a nationwide initiative, boosting both reach and satisfaction as it scaled.
Each training is presented live, giving employees the opportunity to interact in real time. For those unable to attend, replays are made available on demand, ensuring no one falls behind. After each session, McDonald’s collects employee feedback through BigMarker’s built-in survey tools, enabling the L&D team to refine and improve the program over time.
Results delivered
What began as a modest rollout, an average of just two trainings per month, has steadily grown to nearly five sessions per month in recent years. Attendance has surged as well. Average registrants per session have nearly doubled, now averaging 200 per webinar, with some sessions attracting more than 500 employees.
The results speak for themselves. More employees are attending more trainings than ever before, and feedback has remained overwhelmingly positive year over year. Employees consistently describe the sessions as clear, informative, and enjoyable, with survey comments (translated to English) including:
“Excellent preparation, clear and easy to follow.”
“Very kind, thorough, and friendly!”
“Excellent webinar—engaging, interesting, and explanatory.”
“Always a pleasure to keep up to date in this way.”
“Everything is always clear, and the courses are very intuitive. Thank you very much.”
As satisfaction scores continue to rise year over year, McDonald’s Italia has created not just a training program, but a trusted channel for ongoing development and alignment across hundreds of restaurant teams. By meeting employees where they are, and giving them the tools to grow, McDonald’s Italia is reinforcing its operational excellence one webinar at a time.
