CEO Club Briefing

Stephen J. Easterbrook

President and CEO, McDonald's

Stephen J. Easterbrook

President and CEO, McDonald's

"McDonald's President and CEO Stephen Easterbrook speaks to the Boston College Chief Executives Club"

"McDonald’s wouldn’t come to the top of people's lists as being one of the most innovative companies in the world," particularly during this time of technology-driven disruption, Stephen Easterbrook, president and chief executive officer of the McDonald’s Corporation, told the February 2 meeting of the Boston College Chief Executives Club. While McDonald's has made its mark in the past with major innovations such as the development and introduction of its drive-through restaurants, it has more recently been "showing some dangerous signs of aging." To address that, "we have tried to squeeze about four or five years' worth of change into two years," Easterbrook said. He pointed to successes such as McDonald's All Day Breakfast (which now accounts for some 20 percent of the corporation’s US business), and the introduction of Apple Pay at its American franchises. "Another nice recent example," Easterbrook noted, "was our commitment last year to shift the two billion eggs that we buy every year in the US to cage-free eggs." Boston Scientific Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Mahoney introduced Easterbrook.