Doug Wright MBE, a man whose name has become synonymous with McDonald’s in the West Midlands, has announced his retirement from the fast food giant after an extraordinary 44-year career.
Wright, affectionately known throughout the region as Mr McDonald’s, has sold his 26-strong restaurant portfolio in a move that brings to an end one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial journeys in British business. Sixteen of the sites will return to corporate ownership, while the remaining ten will pass into the hands of fellow franchisees.
It’s the closing chapter of a career that began with the most modest of openings: on 1 July 1981, a then-16-year-old Wright took a cleaning job at McDonald’s in Bedford, earning just 93p an hour.
From there, through sheer graft, leadership and vision, Wright rose through the ranks to become one of the company’s most successful UK franchisees. In 2002, after years of service at the corporate level, he realised a lifelong ambition when he was granted his first franchised restaurant. Over the next two decades, he built Wright Restaurants into a regional powerhouse and one of the West Midlands’ largest private employers, with nearly 3,000 staff.
“I joined McDonald’s initially for three weeks,” Wright reflects, “and it taught me life skills. That’s something I hear time and again from employees and their families.”
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