We’re launching the second season of Hamburger Business Review, our podcast, newsletter, and burger business enthusiast community by letting you decide which case study we analyze. Since we started Season 1 looking at the evolution of McDonald’s adaptation to the social concerns around the capital “E” environment we thought we’d pair that with a look at the more modern corporate issue of sustainability for season 2.
That leaves us with three solid choices for case studies from the Harvard Business School:
- Where’s the (Sustainable) Beef?
- Managing a Sustainable Supply Chain
- Decarbonizing McD in Latin America
You can visit our most recent post to vote or see the results.
In Where’s the (Sustainable) Beef? we look at the 2006 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report “Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options” which detailed the connection between livestock agriculture, particularly beef, and its adverse impact on the environment, including land, soil, and water degradation as well as the reduction of biodiversity and how McDonald’s attempted to step in and change the narrative.
In Managing a Sustainable Supply Chain we look at how McDonald’s responded to pressure from Greenpeace’s Amazon deforestation campaign in order to make its supply chain more socially and environmentally responsible.
In Decarbonizing McD in Latin America we have the opportunity to look at the decarbonization strategy of the largest independent-franchisee of McDonald’s, Arcos Dorados-McDonald’s, and how they worked to minimize their carbon footprint while maintaining double digit sales growth.
The title “Where’s the (Sustainable) Beef?” is very good, but perhaps there some fellow supply chain stans and decarbonizing fiends out there?
It’s hard to imagine how McDonald’s argues that it is sustainable but I can understand how they can become more sustainable. Much like the switch away from styrofoam that we discussed in season one, they operate at such a massive global scale that even a small decision can have super-sized impacts.
In Canada the switch from the iconic plastic stir stick and other single use plastics eliminated 700 tonnes of plastics annually. And being a marketing behemoth, they of course used this focus on reduction and recycling into a marketing opportunity with “The Last Straw.“
At Hamburger Business Review we believe that there is no issue that McDonald’s doesn’t touch any one of these case studies will provide another opportunity to study look at how McDonald’s, as the perfect embodiment of global capitalism, impacts the everyday lives of not just employees and customers, but everyone in the world.