McDonald's People

Morgan McStay

My name is Morgan McStay and I’m a McDonald’s owner/operator with three restaurants in Dublin. I’ve been working for McDonald’s for 27 years, starting as a crew member in 1979 and working all through college.

I was always looking for promotion and McDonald’s moved me at a pace I wanted to go at. I became a restaurant manager and then, an Operations Consultant. After three years, I was promoted to Operations Manager and in 1998, I became an owner/operator.

I always highlighted my personal goals to my reporting manager and expressed my desires to grow. And I learned, early on, the importance of setting goals for myself. I gave myself one, three and five year goals, worked hard towards what I wanted and aligned my goals with what the company wanted to achieve. Then, when I became an owner/operator, I learned to work through my people and with them to achieve my goals and ambitions.

When I was Operations Manager, I had responsibility for a lot of areas that would not come under the normal scope of Operations, such as construction, I.T. and some of the office functions. In particular, I was involved in the setting up of the I.T. system in Ireland and this was a great chance for me to increase my all round skill set.

Sometimes, in the early days, I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked with my family and friends but now I work with my wife, Jacqueline. We make a good team. We have learned to take time off together with our family. We commit ourselves to going away on our breaks and when we’re away, we just keep our mobiles off and give ourselves proper time to unwind.

I really enjoy spending time with people at McDonald’s and getting to know them because it’s through people that you achieve results. I always try to reward my staff when the company does well because if my business does well, I want my staff to get the benefit of that too.