KEY POINTS:
Mark Hawthorne eats out at the burger chain about 10 times a week. It is partly convenience - he typically works a 12-hour day - but the time he spends at the local McDonald's in Greenlane, Auckland also fits with a change of approach for the fast food
firm.
The appointment of Hawthorne coincided with a shift from the relatively autonomous New Zealand operation to one that answers more directly to Australia, where sales growth has been stronger.
With that change the New Zealand business has become more focused on operations.
Indeed, 35-year-old Australian took over the local operation 12 months ago but he is no stranger to the Golden Arches and the day-to-day machinations of making the meat patties meet the buns.
Like nine of the 10 other executives at the company he started out with the firm as a teenager. He says he has "ketchup in my veins.
Within six months of his starting, the company has moved its head office from what he calls "palatial" facilities in the city fringe suburb of Freeman's Bay. It is now based at an office park in Great South Rd just a stone's throw from the biggest company owned restaurant.
There was a feeling, he said, that it had become removed from the day-to-day business of selling food.
In any case, Hawthorne is never far from the shop floor thanks to an innovative new piece of technology that allows him to keep an eye on all 94 drive-through restaurants.
"It's great, isn't it," he says pointing to a screen that has pride of place on his desk and gives real time records of wait times from people ordering their burger and fries to picking it up.
"Likewise individual stores have displays above the drive-through showing the times for three or four other outlets, so that staff can judge their performance.
Hawthorne says that when he sees queues delayed for any length of time he calls the store to find out if there are any special problems, but in practice this only happens about once every three weeks to a month.
"It's a fantastic tool created by our IT guys here at McDonald's New Zealand, which is going to be picked up in the rest of the world," he said.
Drive-through revenue is growing and it's important to McDonald's.
In the US especially the interstate freeways are dotted with drive-through restaurants and it's possible to imagine a large central "Big Brother" office.
But in this country with just 140 outlets and 92 drive-throughs, the real time records - delivered via the internet - go directly to the boss' desk. Hawthorne watches with an eagle eye.
"We have a time in out minds of 3.5 minutes" he says, pointing to the monitor that highlights stores that are taking too long in purple and those with serious long waits in black.
He turns to the monitor: "New Plymouth is the slowest at the moment - with 23 customers and a wait time of four and a half. Palmerston North is doing the best - it's our best performing drive-through serving 52 people with an average wait of one minute 14 seconds. If the problem persists he says he makes a call to the outlet to find out if there is anything wrong.
Hawthorne took an after school job at the McDonald's in Coff's harbour in northern New South Wales and worked several years while completing his accounting degree before working with Ernst and Young.
He was approached by McDonald's after a couple of years working in a number of roles most recently handling the procurement for both countries.
