csua.org/u/gmd -> www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/business/worldbusiness/20burger.html?ex=1308456000&en=7c7c0f79159a5a0d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&
Skip to next paragraph Lars Klove for The New York Times Ed Alcock for The New York Times Denis Hennequin, a Parisian, oversees 6,276 McDonald's restaurants across Europe. "We are an icon, a symbol, we don't claim to be otherwise," Mr Hennequin said. "Yes, we were shocked," he went on, recalling how his business meeting was interrupted by the news of the bulldozing. But even as protesters sought to cast McDonald's as the embodiment of all that is wrong with fast food and American culture, the French never stopped eating its hamburgers. Indeed, for all the attacks on the company, McDonald's operating profit in France last year was second only to that of McDonald's in the United States. Mr Hennequin is very much the engineer of the restaurant chain's success here, and one of his most compelling lessons about doing business in France came from the bulldozer incident. After the demolition, he started ad campaigns telling customers more about McDonald's France, what ingredients it used and what kind of people it employed. Part of his success lies in blurring the national lines about what kind of restaurant McDonald's is. For one thing, all the buns, meat and other ingredients are from France; In fact, the only ingredient that is not French, paradoxically, is the cheese on the cheeseburgers. That is because McDonald's relies on cheddar the one kind that the French do not make very well. So, when McDonald's France promotes a one-month special of large burgers with cheese each winter, the cheese comes from the Netherlands or Austria. Mr Hennequin's skill lies in his selling something quintessentially American to a people who purport to be against American culture. That has helped him climb to the highest rung for a non-American in this distinctly American company, one not noted for advancing foreigners. His secret is that he follows the McDonald's playbook: careful choice of locations and personnel, training of personnel and indoctrination of the McDonald's credo. And he says that, frankly, he has relied on the quirkiness of his own people, the French: an overt distaste for Americana in concept, mixed with a kind of admiration for American food, films, music and television programming. McDonald's success in Europe comes amid its resurgence in the United States. As in Europe, McDonald's in the United States attracted attention by introducing healthy food items, like salad and fruit. But unlike Europe, McDonald's revival in the United States came in recent months partly because of the enormous success of the Dollar Menu, where all items, like double cheeseburgers and fried chicken sandwiches, cost $1. France and the rest of Europe did not suffer as harsh a slump as did McDonald's in the United States. In fact, the strength of the French and other European restaurants helped the parent company get through the rough patch. In several quarters last year McDonald's noted that the company got a boost from its European restaurants, its second-biggest market. As the president of McDonald's Europe, Mr Hennequin, 47, is responsible for 41 countries and is the first European to hold the job at McDonald's. That put him in a tough spot last fall during student protests against changes in the youth labor law, for McDonald's has also become a symbol for precarious employment, as the French call it that is, jobs that are easy come and easy go. So it is not surprising that even Mr Hennequin's own family believed his career at McDonald's lacked an element of respectability, much less cachet. "My grandmother thought I was selling French fries on the Boulevard Saint-Michel," he said. Mr Hennequin joined McDonald's after obtaining degrees in law and economics and then working for a short time for a consulting firm. After training at a McDonald's in Mulhouse, in the east of France, he quickly climbed the corporate ladder from restaurant manager to field consultant to president of McDonald's France, and then, last year, to president of McDonald's Europe, with its 6,276 restaurants. There are now 1,035 McDonald's restaurants in France, making it the third-largest European market after Britain and Germany.
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