MISSION
To help private business owners, private clients and families maintain control of their financial universe and Be Better Off by delivering the Kelly+Partners financial advice system.
Kelly+Partners offers McDonald’s franchisees a full range of accounting, tax, bookkeeping, payroll and business advice services. Our teams’ expertise and knowledge of the McDonald’s System, enables us to manage your entire function, giving you complete peace of mind and leaving you Better Off.
DIFFERENCE
Tailored
We professionally manage your complete personal and business financial universe.
We assign each client a personal Director as their direct point of contact who then coordinates our accountants, advisors, consultants and financial planners to deliver tailored expert advice in an integrated manner.
The comfort of knowing that everything is taken care of is tremendously valuable to those seeking to achieve and maintain lasting success.
Expert
Fiercely independent and privately owned, we act with integrity and in the best interests of our clients at all times.
Creating value through holistic expert advice and compliance, the ongoing financial success of our clients is paramount to us.
Trust continues to be the hallmark of our firm as we work pro-actively to grow and protect your long term wealth.
Advice
Kelly+Partners deliver a personalised service through structured processes – ensuring all client requirements are discussed and agreed upon upfront, with agreed assignments executed on time and within budget.
As a Kelly+Partners client you can rely on the personal attention of a Director as your trusted advisor. We also ensure a second Director is familiar with your important issues in order to secure continuity of service and additional support.
PERSONAL
The Kelly+Partners philosophy is centred upon the provision of expert financial advice tailored to each client’s unique personal and business circumstances.
We take great pride in our personalised approach to Accounting and Taxation – implementing structured systems with year-round contact to ensure our clients receive timely, sophisticated, forward-looking solutions.
In order to ensure the highest levels of client satisfaction, we have established the following principles for our professional engagement:
1
Understanding clients’ aspirations and detailed requirements is key to our ability to deliver outstanding results.
2
We don’t want to be average advisors to our clients – we want to be great.
3
The success of our clients ensures the satisfaction and meaningfulness of the work that our advisors undertake.
4
In order to achieve the above, we offer detailed and highly structured processes that ensure a consistently outstanding level of service.
5 6 7
Kelly+Partners advisors understand that everything delivered on behalf of a client must create value and that this value must be clearly communicated.
We choose our clients carefully after considering their position with respect to our being able to add value and deliver on specific client objectives.
Our dedication to creating value is reflected in our fees, representing excellent value for money.
. . . the ongoing financial success of our clients is paramount to us.
BUSINESS
Your accounting and tax advantage
Helping clients to protect their financial futures in a rapidly evolving accounting and tax environment, we partner with you to unlock potential through the Kelly+Partners Financial Advice System.
Providing fiercely independent financial advice, we take the time to understand your business – assisting our diverse client base through a full suite of integrated advisory services.
We leverage our extensive network to deliver premium cross-sector solutions tailored to your needs, with our fully accredited professional team offering insightful advice and management while fulfilling all compliance requirements.
Measuring our performance by the success of our clients, Kelly+Partners provides real peace of mind, experience and integrity across all required specialty areas, including:
+ Full service accounting
+ Taxation advice and compliance
+ Auditing
+ Business acquisitions, sales and succession planning
+ Corporate and management services
+ Litigation support and investigations
+ Superannuation services
+ Immigration support
TAX ADVISORY
Trust and experience
Kelly+Partners Tax Legal is a boutique tax advisory service delivering integrated specialist solutions for private clients and corporate groups.
Providing expert legal tax advice to Australian and international clients, we take the time to understand your objectives – creating value by holistically managing your tax considerations to realise opportunities and fulfill compliance. Our deep industry knowledge, understanding of governance and specialist skills culminate in a full service offering for our clients. Regulation changes in the evolving taxation landscape can often lead to confusion. We quickly recognise key issues in order to deal with your personal and complex affairs – meeting both immediate and future needs in a proactive and costeffective manner.
With tailored advice to help you successfully manage benefits and reduce liabilities, our specialist expertise covers all aspects of Australian taxation law, international tax and tax structuring.
Kelly+Partners Tax Legal Services include: Specialist Tax Advisory
+ Tax planning for all your affairs
+ Corporate tax including mergers & acquisitions
+ Tax office audits, disclosures, investigations & tax disputes
+ International tax planning
+ Trust structures & joint ventures
+ Funds management & managed investment trusts
+ Estate planning solutions
+ Tax structuring for family office.
WEALTH
What is a Self Managed Super Fund?
A Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF) is a form of superannuation fund that is controlled by the members, giving greater control over their retirement savings than other types of superannuation funds such as industry or retail super funds. This includes wider investment choice and greater control over
Why establish a SMSF?
Some advantages of an SMSF include:
+ Being able to invest, so that income and capital gains are taxed at the lower superannuation tax rates. These rates can be as low as 0 per cent and no higher than 15 per cent.
+ Being able to invest in a wide range of assets, including direct property, which are not normally available in traditional super funds.
investments and flexibility in the payment of retirement benefits, such as pensions and annuities, directly from the fund.
SMSFs must be established for the sole purpose of providing benefit to the fund member on retirement. Or, if the member dies before retirement, a benefit to that member’s dependents. This is referred to as the Sole Purpose Test.
+ Being able to coordinate your superannuation investment strategy with your non superannuation assets and business.
+ Being able to structure income streams or pensions in a very tailored way, that suits you and your family.
+ Being able to structure your estate planning to ensure certainty about what happens to your assets when you pass away. An SMSF offers many advantages for estate planning over other ownership structures and over traditional super funds.
+ Being in control of all key decisions, including investment decisions, but still having the ability to take advice from specialists. You will need specialist accounting, taxation, investment, estate planning and strategic advice for your fund.
+ Having the ability to transfer personally owned shares and some property into the fund.
+ Being able to buy business premises for use in your business.
More control and greater flexibility over investments
SMSF members can choose where their retirement savings are invested, with options including listed shares, bonds, listed investment companies (LICs), managed funds, ETFs and direct property.
This flexibility in investment options allows SMSF members to actively manage their investments. With a hands-on investment approach, SMSF members can quickly adjust their portfolios as markets change.
Lower fees and better performance
A Commonwealth Government report titled A Statistical Summary of Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (Dec 2009), based on ATO and APRA data, found SMSF members generally pay lower fees, and that, on average, SMSF Investments performed better than all other super funds over 2006, 2007 and 2008.
How an SMSF could benefit you
Depending on your individual situation, the advantages of an SMSF may include:
+ Tailored tax management on investment income and capital gains.
+ Greater flexibility in investment choices and asset selection.
+ Control over your total investment portfolio, with the ability to take account of the risk profile of all your assets, including those held outside superannuation.
+ The ability to pool your resources with up to 4 fund members with similar financial objectives, such as family members.
+ Maximum flexibility in establishing and managing pensions, including account based, transition to retirement and pensions.
+ Greater flexibility for accessing Centrelink benefits such as the age pension.
+ Investing in direct property.
+ The ability to transfer personally owned listed shares, business real property and managed.
ESTATE
Kelly+Partners provides expertise in estate and succession services across the transition from the current baby boomer owners to a next generation.
More than two-thirds of working Australians are employed by small and medium term business, many of which are private companies. Over the next two decades, more than half of these businesses are likely to require a transition from the current baby boomer founders to the next generation of owners.
The management of this complex process via an effective and diligent process to deliver a seamless transition is absolutely critical for many private business owners.
The business succession process involves a number of critical questions around:
+ Transfer of ownership
+ Finance
+ Tax impact
+ Legal structuring
+ Business and asset valuation
+ Risk mitigation
+ Wealth protection
+ Supplier and customer management
+ Staff retention and incentivisation
+ Preferred timing
When you combine these issues with the substantial emotional issues involved, genuine experienced expertise is required from advisors that can effectively manage the transition. At Kelly+Partners, our core expertise includes knowledge of the process and management required to deliver the desired outcomes for all key stakeholders during a business succession event. We also understand that an excellent financial outcome is not the sole objective, and that business and family coherence also matters acutely.
Our systematic and personalised approach ensures:
+ Clarity for key stakeholders
+ Shared mission and vision of the family group
+ Understanding the family outcomes and individual family member needs (financial and other)
+ Financial requirements of all parties
+ Estate planning that incorporates all relevant matters
FAMILY OFFICE
Our Family Office services offer a holistic approach for high net wealth clients seeking to protect and manage their assets.
These services include:
+ Financial Administration
+ Management Reporting
+ Succession Planning
+ Accounting and Taxation Reporting
+ Estate Planning
Purpose of Family Office
Our Family Office services provide integrated financial solutions to help clients answer questions such as “Who is going to manage my financial affairs when I am no longer able to?”. How do I educate and prepare the next generation?” and “How do I educate and protect and grow my capital for generations to come?”.
Our Family Office assists with the successful transfer of wealth across generations and the prudent ongoing management of family assets. Our services are most beneficial for clients with investable assets of $10 million or more.
Workings of Family Office
We partner with you to understand your needs, ensuring that the best interests of your family are taken care of on an inter-generational and immediate basis through a full suite of integrated services including administration, reporting, advice and education.
Our processes ensure that structuring, tax, compliance and accounting are always considered.
Each client is allocated a Client Director to serve as their trusted advisor and direct point of contact, with at least one other Kelly+Partners Client Director performing a secondary role to ensure continuity of service and additional support.
Reporting and Administration
Overseeing financial matters, we act as the trusted advisor of your family’s wealth.
Assets are always held directly by our clients, while our reporting system enables us to generate detailed reports showing:
+ Assets
+ Asset Allocation
+ Transactions
+ Performance
We report to you and/or your Family Principal as often as you need or wish.
I always think of Kelly+Partners as the accountants for the grown-ups
McDonald’s Franchisee
MARK HALFORD
Mark Halford is my name. I’m a McDonald’s franchisee currently owning and operating five restaurants in North West Sydney. This year’s my 40th year with the McDonald’s business and I started as a crew person back in the late seventies. The reason I chose Kelly+Partners to be my business partner was because Kelly+Partners specialised in business owners, and that’s what really drew me towards their business because they had a wonderful depth of knowledge about how business functions – they are not your normal accountant.
‘Kelly+Partners specialises in business owners, and that’s what really drew me towards them, they had a wonderful depth of knowledge about how business functions – they are not your normal accountant.’
They do the compliance, but they do more than the compliance. They become mentors. They’re very well connected throughout the business community, and they lead me down paths that I’ve never been down before. I would say innovative. They have brought new systems, new technologies and a new way of doing business, which is really unleashing the potential of my business.
There’s no question that both my profitability and structure is far more sound today than what it was five years ago. But the innovation of the company, the way that the partnership arrangement works, that means you’re going to have people there for the long term. You’re not going to have people turning over and have a new face every 12 months.
The fact that they’re on the leading edge with technology, they’re always dragging us into the future to streamline my business and make my business a lot easier to run. They’ve provided a lot of solutions to remove and reduce the administration in my business and take that compliance headache away as a business owner, which allows me to focus on the important things, which is my business and my profit and loss statements.
People is what makes Kelly+Partners stand out from other accounting firms and I mean top notch quality, educated, smart people. Having people that are first class and experts in the field is what makes the point of difference for them. My experience with Kelly+Partners over the last five years has been fantastic.
Scan here to watch Mark’s testimonial
McDonald’s Franchisee
JANIENE POLLOCK
My name’s Janiene Pollock. I’m a McDonald’s franchisee in Western Australia. We’ve got two restaurants, Riverton and Willeton.
I’ve been in the system for approximately five years. Before that my husband and I were originally from Sydney.
The last 12 years before coming to McDonald’s, we actually had three Gloria Jeans Cafes and two Fernwood Women’s Health Clubs. And prior to that I had 17 years experience with McDonald’s starting as a 14-year-old fry girl.
So it’s great to be back in the system after we made the change from selling the coffee shops and the gyms and coming to McDonald’s.
It’s quite a complex business model and we needed an accountant that could take the business to the next level and make sure that they knew the McDonald’s system inside and out and the team were absolutely fantastic.
They came highly recommended as an approved McDonald’s supplier to the system. So we met with them and we were really happy to proceed. We needed to grow.
‘They knew the McDonald’s system inside and out’
And I think Kelly+Partners had an outlook where they want to grow with you and they want your business to be better.
And I believe that Brett’s mission is that he wants the business to be better for the clients that he works with, and I wholly believe that he’s achieving that with us and he understands our business inside and out. He was involved in the entire process.
In the early days, the very beginning when they were looking at valuations of restaurants, making recommendations to us, his knowledge was very insightful because he knew the McDonald’s system inside and out.
We had a fairly difficult process purchasing the business. There were some difficulties with the structure and the way that it had
been set up and McDonald’s were making some changes to how they sold restaurants.
So they were able to look at the scenario and work out exactly what would work best for us. And we were one of the first transactions to take place with the new sales scenario that McDonald’s had put in place. It was very successful, so we are appreciative of that.
Kelly+Partners was very integral in assisting us in setting up the systems back of house so that I could focus on front of house and making sure that we delivered on what we promised to our customers.
I’ve definitely recommended other franchisees to check out Kelly+Partners.
They are definitely worth working with, we’re not looking back and we won’t be looking to go anywhere in a hurry. We enjoy working with them.
They’re on the same page as us. I like the way they think and really want to make our business better.
They’re looking at how they can make our business better, and how they can give back to the business. This really is a true partnership.
McDonald’s Franchisee
HAYDEN SMITH SMITH HAYDEN
My name is Hayden Smith. I’m the owner operator of McDonald’s, Forster. I have owned this store since December 2013. We employ around 125 to 130 people locally, and we are Forster’s biggest employer.
I first met Kelly+Partners on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland when I was seeing a friend of mine, also another McDonald’s franchisee.
‘Not only are they easily accessible for a large organisation, they really care and they put your interests at heart. So you always feel like your priorities are their top interest.’
My experience with Kelly+Partners has been a really rewarding experience over the course of four years. Initially I signed with Kelly+Partners because they were able to financially provide a much better service, but now it’s much more of a relationship for me with the people that they are. The team at Kelly+Partners have been fantastic in helping guide me through my first four years as an operator to ensure our long term success.
Working with Kelly+Partners hasn’t necessarily changed the way I do business, because as the owner of my own business I like to have a core group of advisors who I get advice from and then make my own decisions. However, my relationship with Kelly+Partners has given me a really structured, clear way to make decisions financially moving forward.
Not only are they easily accessible for a large organisation, they really care and they have your interests at heart. So you always feel like your priorities are their top interest. We’re not their biggest business, but we always feel like we’re their top priority. Lastly, I’d just like to thank the team at Kelly+Partners for their trust and their commitment to my business over the last four years.
As a loyal client from now on, I look forward to spending the next 20 plus years with Kelly+Partners.
Scan here to watch Hayden’s testimonial
McDonald’s Franchisee
JIM POLLICINA JIM POLLICINA
My name is Jim Pollicina and I’m a franchisee, who has been involved in McDonald’s since 1984. I started as crew and currently own ten restaurants in the Sydney area.
It’s been seven or eight years since I decided I wasn’t happy with my existing accounting, so I met with a number of other firms and decided that I would try Kelly+Partners. And it’s been a wonderful ride since then.
I was after someone that was able to meet my needs, able to do it at a good cost, which had been a problem for me, and also to innovate and do things outside of the standard way we do things.
I was after an accounting firm that did the majority of things encompassed in their fee and in a fast manner that fitted my needs. Some of the large, large accounting firms charge a significant premium for very little service, but Kelly+Partners work with me and they come up with a plan to help achieve some of my long-term and mediumterm goals. And we work towards them.
‘You want a little bit of extra service and touch and they give me that.’
So it’s more than just about accounting and grunt work. It’s also about building your individual network as a person and helping you achieve some of those long-term goals. I have a very solid relationship with all parts of the Kelly+Partners business.
I could quite happily pick up the phone and ring my main guy and Brett himself. I could ring any of his support staff.
In addition to that, there’s also some extra curricular stuff that the guys have done in the past, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Some of their growth programs have been fantastic, and some of the functions that we’ve held outside of the accounting business have also been great.
So it’s been a very good relationship, a lot of fun. I’d like to consider McDonald’s business as the cherry on top and all the stuff you do
in the middle as the long-term plan. So we’ve worked more on that plan to build that network and to build the asset base rather than just the business.
I’m getting great value, I’m getting great service and my personal net position has significantly improved over the last seven years.
I’ve got to say Brett Kelly in particular has done a fantastic job. Become a bit of a friend as part of the relationship. He takes a personal interest in what happens with me and my family. Knows all my kids. It’s a personal relationship and that’s what I want.
Anyone can get a big accounting firm and get someone who do grunt work. But you want a little bit of extra service and touch and they give me that.
We’re better off with Kelly+Partners.
Scan here to watch Jim’s testimonial
McDonald’s Franchisee
IAN GARTON GARTON IAN
My name is Ian Garton and my business is called Garton Group. We franchise McDonald’s restaurants. We have nine restaurants which is a good-sized business. We have 1100 employees and are one of the of the larger McDonald’s groups in Australia.
I met Brett Kelly through a friend, and at the time we met I was less than happy with the accounting I was receiving. I was a very unhappy client actually. In some regards you would say that I felt a little neglected or ignored and wasn’t getting what I was paying for, but I sure was paying for it. Brett came along and showed me his system and suggested that he could do better. I guess like many business people, I’d convinced myself that my business was a very complex, complicated thing and that I’d been made to feel that I was totally reliant on my previous accountant.
Kelly+Partners came along and they said, no, none of that. This is a simple business. People come in, they give you money and you give them food. We can fix that. And the next thing that happened, of course, is that some of the Kelly+Partners experts turned up at my office and suddenly they were reviewing every aspect of my business.
They were reviewing the security of my computers, the accuracy of my payroll tax returns. They were so thorough that I was somewhat amazed by the service that I started to receive. I always think of Kelly+Partners as the accountants for the grown ups. There’s a lot
of accountants who do what you tell them to do, say what you want them to say.
But Kelly+Partners, they tell me what I need to hear. They are beyond diligent in what they do. If they say they’re going to do something, you know, it’s because that’s actually the right thing to do and that they have done the research that they need to do leading up to those decisions. They’re not going to run your business for you, but they’ll make sure you’re organised when you’re doing it.
‘I always think of Kelly+Partners as the accountants for the grown-ups. There’s a lot of accountants who do what you tell them to do, say what you want them to say, but Kelly+Partners, tell me what I need to hear’
It might be the business model or it might be the quality of the people, but I just like the service I get from them. I’d say Kelly+Partners would be an absolute asset to any business person.
Scan here to watch
McDonald’s Franchisee
TONY FAVOTTO TONY FAVOTTO
My name is Tony Favotto, I’m a McDonald’s Franchisee, I started in McDonald’s when I was 15 years of age back in 1981. I worked for the corporation, got up to store management level, went to work for a licensee in the Campbelltown area, became his operations manager for eight restaurants, then had an opportunity to buy my own restaurant in 1997. I bought McDonald’s at Padstow and 20 years later got five restaurants in the Bankstown/Punchbowl area.
So it’s a no brainer as far as I’m concerned. I would tell them that if they want to move their business forward and if they want to increase their wealth outside of McDonald’s, let’s go ring Brett asap.
In my 20 years, I’ve had three accountants prior to Brett and all those accountants were basically compliance based and that’s all they were concerned about. They weren’t concerned about moving forward or anything else, just compliance. So I went and had a meeting with Brett and I was impressed with his Flight PlanTM and his access to experts in the tax area and so on.
So I decided to leave my last accountant and join Brett. My previous accountant wasn’t
checking the asset registers, so when I went to Brett the first thing he looked at was the asset register and found about half a million dollars of tax deductible savings. So I was very happy with that. He’s in business with me. It’s a partnership. We’re working together.
He wants to build my wealth and he’s got a plan to help me do that. So working together in the same business has changed a few areas. It has made me much more aware of the accounting side of it because I really didn’t pay much attention to a lot of the accountants. So with Kelly+Partners, I’m more exposed to that side of the business. As a result, I’m more aware and doing things better overall to improve the operations of my business and the bottom line 100%, because Brett is not a compliance accountant. He’s interested in building your wealth outside McDonald’s and finding opportunities within McDonald’s.
So it’s a no brainer as far as I’m concerned. I would tell them that if they want to move their business forward and if they want to increase their wealth outside of McDonald’s, let’s go ring Brett asap.
Scan here to watch Tony’s testimonial
OUTSOURCED CFO
We understand that operating a McDonald’s franchise involves unique challenges and opportunities. Our expertise in the McDonald’s system means we can provide you with specialist accounting, tax, and business advisory services, ensuring financial progress.
McDonald’s Franchisee Service
With deep experience working with McDonald’s operators, our integrated approach to accounting for McDonald’s Franchisees covers both your business and personal finances.
Service offering
+ Startup support and registrations
+ Back-office and bank reconciliation services
+ Payroll tax calculations and month-end processing
+ Business accounting, taxation, and valuation
+ Cashflow forecasting, budgeting and profit projections
+ Compliance services (financial statements, BAS, Fringe Benefits Tax and income tax returns)
Through the Kelly+Partners Financial Progress System™, your Client Director will put together a team of accountants who can assist you across:
+ Outsourced accounting and bookkeeping
+ Management reporting
+ Corporate management (ASIC compliance, statutory records)
+ Company secretarial services
+ Tax advisory, audit and assurance
+ Loans and financing
+ Wealth management
+ Estate planning
+ Succession and exit planning
+ Insurance
TEAM
Brett Kelly
BBus, CA, MTax, DipFS, FTIA, JP Founder and CEO
Brett has more than 20 years of commercial and professional accountancy experience. He has specialised in Structuring, Strategy and Valuation. He commenced his career with Price Waterhouse and has worked in senior management roles across Audit, Business Services, and Corporate Finance.
Brett is also the best-selling author of four books, has presented to more than two thousand business groups and has twice addressed the National Press Club, Canberra. Brett has significant expertise advising Private Business Owners, Private Clients and Families of significant wealth.
Brett holds a Bachelors degree in Business from UTS, Masters degree in Taxation from UNSW, is a qualified Financial Planner, a fellow of the Taxation Institute of Australia and a Justice of the Peace in NSW, together with being a registered Tax Agent.
Andrew Zoghbi
BBus, DipFP, CA, JP, Tax Agent Senior Partner
Andrew joined Kelly+Partners in 2008 and has over 15 years experience in his field. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Sydney and is a Chartered Accountant. Andrew is proactive in helping business owners manage their affairs in an efficient and effective manner. He has considerable experience in providing accounting and tax services to family businesses in a variety of industries, specialising in real estate, property development and franchising.
Particularly, Andrew has become a trusted advisor to, and has developed a strong reputation with McDonald’s, servicing over 70 restaurants across the country.
Casually, Andrew loves the outdoors, skiing and spending time with family and friends. He also enjoys fishing and a game of tennis.
Kenneth Ko
BBus, CA, HKICPA Senior Partner
Kenneth joined Kelly+Partners in 2015 as Finance Manager. He is a Chartered Accountant with more than 10 years chartered and commercial accounting experience. He commenced his career with BDO Chartered Accountants in 2007, and then joined Chandler Macleod in 2011 in a commercial accounting role.
In 2013, he moved to Coca-Cola Amatil to lead their financial accounting team. Kenneth joined Kelly+Partners’ head office in North Sydney as Finance Manager in 2015. He subsequently founded the Hong Kong business in 2016, maintaining his role as Finance Manager.
Trent Doughty
MBA (Finance), DipFP, Fellow Fin, JP Senior Partner, Private Wealth
Trent joins us from BT Financial Group where he was director of BT Private Wealth Markets. Prior to this he held senior investment roles at Citigroup Private Bank and Deutsche Bank Wealth Management in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. He has been trusted financial advisor to a number of the regions wealthiest families and individuals.
Trent’s in-depth global investment knowledge, industry networks and more than 20 years of industry experience has proven to be a valuable asset to our clients.
The recipe to successful systems and business
Brett Kelly
I’d love to start at the beginning, which is always a good place to start. Where were you born, and where did you grow up –siblings, educational background, your mom and dad – how did all that start for you?
Andrew Gregory
I was born in Melbourne. My mum and dad were Queenslanders originally, which I’m proud of, and every Victorian is a part Queenslander, as you know. I had a really great family life early on, grew up in Melbourne. I was lucky enough, Dad worked for BP, British Petroleum, and we lived and worked in Asia. Well, he worked. I lived in Asia, Indonesia for a few years, Singapore for another few years, and also later on in my work career I was lucky enough to live in Japan for a couple of years as well.
So yeah, growing up was great, great experiences, loved living abroad. Ended up finishing school back in Melbourne, and then went to Monash University, and did an economics degree there. And Mum and Dad were still overseas, so I was lucky enough to live with my brother for year 12 as I finished school.
Brett Kelly
Terrific. So you go to Monash, and then straight out of university . . . how do you come to end up at McDonald’s?
Andrew Gregory
I was just at uni, and obviously I had normal part-time jobs, like I was babysitting, and other things around the place. There was a local Macca’s restaurant getting built up the road in my first year of uni, and living with my brother, in a good way, he encouraged me, as an older brother would, to go and get a job. So I did. We went up to the restaurant that was literally under construction, they were doing the interviews for the crew, and I got a casual position at Macca’s like so many young people in Australia have over the years.
Brett Kelly
So, you’re studying an economics degree, you’re working a part-time job at Macca’s. What were your first impressions as a young person being interviewed, and joining that business?
Andrew Gregory
The level of organisation was really clear. There were systems in place. They could take any young person, help them, engage them, train them, get them working quickly. The systems, the strength of the process really was evident, and still is in our business today. I think the other thing which we still talk about, working at Macca’s is a great training ground. Obviously not everyone who works at a Macca’s restaurant stays for as long as I have. I’m really happy that I have stayed, and I’m really proud of the fact that you can have a career from the restaurant all the way into the head office. A lot of people obviously join our restaurants, get trained, understand those really important life skills around teamwork, and customer service, and punctuality, and discipline around how to work. And all of those things were evident in the restaurant I worked at.
I worked for a franchisee, his name was David Bayes. He had a great environment, and the real focus on people and this idea of work at Macca’s, earn some money whilst you’re obviously managing other parts of your life, and actually get some mates while you do it, or work with your friends while you learn these important skills. That’s really one of the great things we offer to so many young people –that ability to learn, and train, and engage in a workplace at a young age. At the same time, it’s great fun, it fits within your lifestyle, and you earn a few dollars as you go through.
Brett Kelly
It’s a really great story. With many CEOs, you get the impression that they’re like a cherry on top of a cake. Mildly relevant to the cake. They’re not really aware of how
the business is built from the ground up. But you’ve been with the system now for how many years, since that first job?
Andrew Gregory
More than twenty-four, twenty-five years. It’s always been a great system to give people a chance to try different things. So I started in the restaurants with my economics degree. My first job in head office was in the finance team, but I’ve also led teams doing real estate, construction. I’ve lived and worked in Japan, and I’ve gone and been the regional manager in Queensland, as well. It is a business that values leadership and experience.
Of course you need the functional ability to run a team, and to understand how the business works, but what’s more important are leadership skills that are very transferable – and it’s a great career at Macca’s because of that. We don’t consider you an accountant forever, we don’t consider you a lawyer, or a marketing expert only. You have the opportunity to try different things, learn, and also obviously add diverse thoughts into those other teams as you move about the business. I’ve always been lucky that Macca’s has given me that ability to continue to be in a new position – a difficult new position that’s challenged me as I’ve gone through the last 20 or so years.
Brett Kelly
That focus on really great training from the ground up, and building genuine leadership skills . . . what do you guys think leadership is, really?
Andrew Gregory
I think it’s about who you are as a person, trying to be as authentic as possible. Authentic is a word, but what it means is you bring yourself into the discussion, you bring yourself into the decision, you present yourself as who you are. In the system of how we’ve approached things at McDonald’s for a very long time we’ve got some basic unwritten agreements. We want to have fun as a business. We want to be successful as a business. And grow the business, because that’s what gives everyone opportunities, whether it’s our franchisees, or our suppliers, or the corporate team. Growing the business
is really important, and it’s a fundamental part of how we approach things, and who we are.
And I think it’s just . . . the challenge.
I often say to people in our corporate team or to restaurant managers when I meet them, one of the things I really value or encourage is that there’s nothing wrong with feeling nervous when you start a new job. In fact, it’s better to feel some level of nervousness, or ‘I’m not sure exactly I’m going to be brilliant at this.’
When you’re in that mindset of not being completely confident, and not being 100 per cent clear, you’re in a learning mindset. You’re trying to really listen more, and really understand things from different perspectives. Often people get concerned about trying a new role, or moving across into different teams. But so many different careers that I’ve observed, both in and outside of McDonald’s, have been made better because people have taken risks with their career, and moved across into different teams, and I think it’s something we try to do at McDonald’s, and it’s a really important part of someone’s career growth.
Brett Kelly
That makes so much sense. One of the concepts you hear a lot of, if you have anything to do with the Macca’s system, is this threelegged stool. It’s become more common today to think about multiple stakeholders, and the broader role of the business, but McDonald’s has been doing this for 50 years. Can you share what that means? What’s this stool business?
Andrew Gregory
Good question, Brett. We are really proud of the idea of the three-legged stool. Simply: it’s built around our franchisees, our suppliers, and our corporate team. It’s built around the simple, practical, physical premise of a three-legged stool, that if any one of those three legs gets too long, or too short, then the stool destabilises, and falls over. So, a three-legged stool approach, or a systemfirst approach is how we talk about it, it’s really built around long-term relationships.
Our franchisees have long-term relationships, we have very long-term relationships
with many of our suppliers, and our company has been around for 50 years.
Coming to the table with an approach like the three legs of the stool is about how we can all work together to grow the business. Because sometimes we do have competing tensions between those three legs of the stool, but the mindset is the key. Over the long term, if we balance the three-legged stool, it’s a stronger business. It’s a business that will grow, and it’ll provide opportunities for everyone in those three legs of the stool. And I think on the track record, or the evidence, Macca’s has always given great opportunities to every part of that three-legged stool.
Brett Kelly
Now, I’ve deliberately not mentioned the numbers. I’ll come to the numbers at some point. But I’m a great fan of Warren Buffett.
What I love about Warren is that he’s got this long-term mentality, and at Kelly+Partners I’m consistently saying to people, “I want us to be long-term people in a short-term world”. I just believe that anyone that has the right values, and the right behaviours, and the right strategy consistently prosecuted ultimately ends up in a better place. You’ve mentioned very consistently the long-term relationship, thinking about the system first, balancing competing interests . . . knowing that over time it’ll work out. That’s all predicated, I guess, on this long-term mindset of building trust. How do you – in a world that’s increasingly short term – how have you as a leader, and Macca’s as a business, held the fort, and got people to look further out than their short-term situation?
Andrew Gregory
Building trust in our system is a lot about, over and over, doing what you said you would do. It’s about – as people, or as the company, or as a franchisee, or a group of franchisees, or as a supplier – the more times you do what you said you’ve committed to do, and you do it well, the more trust that everyone continues to hold, and believe in. It just reinforces the level, the strength, of the threelegged stool. Building trust is obviously about having relationships, it’s about respectful relationships, and it’s sometimes, as in any
business, or any management of stakeholders, it’s about being respected versus liked.
That level of respect can really drive a level of affection between the different parts of the system. We are really proud of our franchisees, we’re really proud of our suppliers, and really proud of the people in our corporate team. I have worked through so many different challenges and issues to continue to be a successful business over a long period of time. It’s not an easy thing to do, it requires a lot of hard work. We really missed (during Covid) the ability to be face to face across the relationships we have. It’s really reinforced how important those relationships are.
Brett Kelly
It’s so true. At Kelly+Partners, we have been in a privileged position to work with a number of really fantastic McDonald’s franchisees for a long time, and I’ve seen things I’ve mentioned that you and your team deliver well:
You do a face-to-face annual conference in Australia, a global conference every two years on a rotating basis. You get your franchisees together consistently for system meetings. You bring functional teams together across specific parts – marketing, IT, et cetera – to try and harness the input of the franchisees who are very highly qualified, intelligent, committed people.
One of the things that is a bedrock to your system, Andrew, is this 20-year franchise agreement. When somebody becomes a franchisee, they sign a 20-year agreement. Now, at Kelly+Partners, we’ve had, since day one, all our partners sign 10-year partnership agreements. It’s the only organisation in the world in our industry that does it. The whole concept is to get people to think further out than 10 minutes. Ten years, it takes 10 years to do anything constructive. In your business, certainly 20, there’s a huge investment in capital equipment. Where did the 20-year agreement come from? And how do you get confident that you want to partner with somebody for 20 years, and they feel confident in you?
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think a lot of that is built around the level of capital investment that the franchisee needs to make. We’re also fortunate, over a very long period of time my predecessors and the people in the team have bought land. As many know, McDonald’s is a really significant landholder, and with about 70 to 80 per cent of the McDonald’s restaurants in Australia, we actually own the land. And owning land versus leasing land, or leasing property, gives you a really significant level of certainty. And so, with our franchisees, the 20 years gives them a level of certainty. It gives the banks, and the financiers a level of certainty on how they approach lending.
It also translates into long-term relationships with suppliers that give them a level of certainty around the capital, and the investment, and the passion that they bring to the business. And around the quality of food that they produce. Long-term relationships are really beneficial for all of those things. Think about from our menu offering, products like the Big Mac, the Bacon and Egg McMuffin; our hash browns, our french fries, they don’t change much. That’s really deliberate – the relationship we have with our customers is obviously the most important part of it.
How do we make a relationship for 20 years? Thinking about 20 years really focuses you less on the person’s practical ability to do something, and more on what that person, or what the character of that individual as a potential franchisee is.
Over the course of the 20 years, or over the course of our history of the system, many of our franchisees have come in as experts in certain fields. They’ve been ex accountants, or marketing professionals, or school teachers, or any number of different professions from outside the system. Over the course of 20 years, those skills become less relevant to their ability to run a successful McDonald’s franchisees, and it is about their character, what they want to focus on, and their work effort – the ethic around what they want to do to drive their business.
Brett KellyIt’s a huge distinction. I would urge anyone, when they’re making a decision, if you can think of it in a 20-year context, it just helps you make much better people decisions, much better relationship decisions. Today in Australia, I think the stats are that the average mortgage lasts seven and a half years, the average marriage lasts seven years. If you can get people to think long term, you’ve got a gigantic advantage.
McDonald’s is very famous for the quality of its systems. If you said to most people, ‘What is it that makes McDonald’s so successful?’, there is a level of consciousness as to how systemised the business is. The long-term thing’s less understood, hence my emphasis.
But, you can take a young person into the business, get them trained, and up and operating, and contributing very quickly. The quality of the systems in a business speak to the respect that that business has for the time, and efforts, and intelligence of its people, not asking them to do things in a backward, ridiculous way that wastes their time, and their life. That’s the way I’ve always driven our systems here. For you, as a young guy coming in and now in the system nearly twenty-five years, how do you think about systems? How do you get your people to understand the value of systems? A lot of people are interested in doing things, but not really writing them down or codifying. How have you built, and maintained that culture? Because it is truly extraordinary.
Andrew GregoryThe strength of the system is that when we lose the connection, and we make mistakes – I make mistakes, our team makes mistakes –when we see when the system falls down . . . that is when we see the strength of the system.
If you think about it, we need to impact 1,000 restaurants, over 100,000 employees in locations right around Australia that are operating 24 hours, seven days a week in a franchise model. And so, we know the importance of our system, whether it’s the communication that we use, the way that we write instructions and train our
young people in our restaurants, or how we communicate with our franchisees, and engage them in the business plan, and the formulation of the business plan. All of these things, when they work, are brilliant, and the customer gets a great outcome.
When we make mistakes and we upset the balance of that system, or we try and do too much too quickly, or we haven’t communicated well enough to our restaurants or our franchisees – that’s when the system does dislocate for a short amount of time, and that’s when we really do appreciate the strength of the system. We see it when we don’t do it right, it’s a really quick feedback mechanism back from our franchisees, back from our restaurant managers, and it’s something that we often need to adjust really quickly to get it right.
I couldn’t be prouder of my team. I couldn’t be prouder of the franchisees that sit at the table with us, to work on these plans, because when we get it right, it’s incredibly rewarding, and it’s incredibly successful when our business continues to grow.
Brett Kelly
Yes, watch the movie, The Founder, read the book, Grinding It Out. Pay particular attention to a lad called Fred Turner. I was privileged to meet Fred many years ago, and get a photo with him, and have a bit of a chat with him. He wrote the first ops manual, and he started the first McDonald’s Training Academy. I believe in the book it’s described as a room underground. I think it was a basement with no windows.
Andrew Gregory
Yeah, it was part of one of our restaurants in Chicago.
Brett Kelly
So, there was this commitment from the beginning to train people. Andrew, how big, as a proportion of revenue, or some meaningful way to explain to people – it’s a very significant commitment from McDonald’s to train its people – how big does that look today, and how’s it delivered, and what’s the mentality?
Andrew Gregory
I think the number of our employees is the best way. Around 1.4 million Australians have worked at Macca’s at any one time in our 50-year history, which is pretty extraordinary for a country of 25, 26 million.
It’s one thing we are incredibly proud of, our history of training and recruiting, and giving a lot of people their first job, but it’s also something we take incredibly seriously from a responsibility point of view.
Australian people trust Macca’s to employ these people, look after them, train them, and help them with, many of them, with their first job. What we do with training is interesting, in that we focus the functional and practical skills of training in the restaurant. The idea, or the physical place that we call the Hamburger University, is in all of our capital cities around Australia, and our main training centre, the Charlie Bell School of Leadership, in Thornleigh at our main head office in Sydney.
The Hamburger University is where our managers train, and learn the important leadership skills that they need to run a restaurant. And over the course of five or six different training programs, over the course of several years, they can take the skills that they learned in the restaurant, the practical ability to operate all the different parts of the restaurant and at the Hamburger University they learn the leadership, the people skills, and the important requirements to be able to really lead.
Every one of our restaurants has got probably about 130, 140 different employees, and it’s an incredible skill and experience that many of our managers get. The coordination, the fact that you learn through leading so many people, people bring their life to work. They’re different characters. It’s an incredible experience for our young managers. And I know, I talk to my colleagues, other CEOs, and people in business, the experience on a resume of working at McDonald’s, especially at that management level, is still valued incredibly highly. And I know it’s because of their experience working, leading teams, motivating people, communication, all these things that are difficult to learn other than in practice.
Brett Kelly
Is there an academic leader of that, or is it staffed by full-time people, trained by people out of the restaurants? What’s the structure of the Charlie Bell School of Leadership?
Andrew Gregory
There’s a combination. A lot of our ops people are teaching their own experience and skills, and it’s one of the important rotations that our leadership operations people have done. They would’ve done a period of time, or a year or two as a training consultant, where they lead a group, or a classroom of people. They’re trained in facilitation. They’re trained in the various parts of the leadership courses, and they lead a group of managers through their own experience, through the curriculum that’s professionally written.
And you can imagine from a McDonald’s global point of view, we take a lot of syllabus and content that’s consistent around the world, translate it for the 100 different languages, the 100 different markets. We take a lot of that content, we use it, and we also make sure that it’s local, and relevant to the Aussie business. For example, in our training centres, one of the things we’ve put in, which is a unique McDonald’s thing from around the world, we’ve got a barista academy . . . because of the importance of our McCafé business in our restaurants. We’ve got barista academies in all of our training centres around Australia. Aussie customers love proper coffee, barista-made.
Brett Kelly
So Andrew, global restaurant numbers, 40,000?
Andrew Gregory
Yeah, roughly…39 something. Yep.
Brett Kelly
Yeah, so nearly 40,000 restaurants, 100 markets?
Andrew Gregory
Yeah. It’s 120 different countries, and it’s everywhere from Australia, the US. We have restaurants in New Caledonia. We have restaurants in small countries as well. But yeah, over 120 different markets around the world.
Brett Kelly
Yeah. So, when you think about the scale of the operation – sales in Australia in the multi-billions, growing at above 10 per cent consistently for a long time, it’s a financial powerhouse – it’s always been one of the stocks I’ve mentioned to my friends, not clients on a licensed basis, but if you’re looking to buy shares in a decent business, well, there it is. Everyone can own a bit of it. Now, there were a couple of random questions I wanted to ask you. When you were in Japan, Andrew, Den Fujita, was involved in the business, or had it been sold at that point by the family? Did you have anything to do with him? He’s a legendary figure in accounting history, and in Japanese business.
Andrew Gregory
Yeah, so he left the business formally, informally in the early 2000s, I think, and I joined McDonald’s, Japan in 2010. He was gone from McDonald’s in Japan, and actually McDonald’s in Japan is an interesting structure. It’s listed on the Japanese Stock Exchange. The corporation owns some of it, but the mum and dad investors in Japan own more than half of that business, and it’s been a really successful business.
Brett Kelly
Yeah, it’s a great story. So, in my strange Macca’s background, my dad did the early post-mix machines. I worked in an accounting firm that did the Fujita Australian interest and so there’s a long and interesting background. Now, of course, the McDonald’s brand is incredibly famous. I think everyone knows the golden arches, they know Ronald, and they understand that it’s a brand that brings really great joy to people. How have you, over time, kept the brand so relevant as food tastes change, and community standards around different types of eating, and whatnot have
changed? The business has done a tremendous job of keeping the brand relevant. How do you think about brand at McDonald’s?
Andrew Gregory
We’re coming up to our 50th birthday, so there’s a bit of reflection on what we’ve done, and where we’ve been as a brand. One of our most successful achievements from my predecessors over a very long period of time is that we’ve made McDonald’s, which is this global business, and this global brand, we made McDonald’s part of Australia in a good way – and we’ve even earned the nickname of Macca’s.
It represents that people in Australia believe either consciously or subconsciously the commitment that basically 95 per cent of what we sell is produced by Aussie farmers, and sold in Australia. I think we’ve done a really good job of becoming a business that undeniably is a global McDonald’s brand, but is absolutely part of the Australian economy, part of the Australian neighbourhood in our local restaurants, and a really good contributor to society, and community overall, even through Ronald McDonald House Children’s Charities. We are really proud of the association, and the connection we have there.
We’ve worked incredibly hard to make the brand relevant for Australians. And over different points, whether it’s coffee, whether it’s using Angus beef from Aussie farmers –there’s so many different examples where we’ve adjusted and listened to our customers to make us relevant in this country.
What I would say though, the more and more things change, the more and more our customers continue to buy Big Macs, and french fries, and Bacon and Egg McMuffins, and how much the core menu that we have, what really is truly representative of us, Quarter Pounders and Big Mac, remains still the vast majority of our business, and we’re proud of that, as well.
Brett Kelly
Yeah, it’s funny. It’s one of the points I’ve picked up over time. There’s at least four McDonald’s menu brands that are multi-
billion dollar businesses in their own right, and I think they’re Big Macs, french fries, nuggets, and not sure what the fourth one is.
Andrew Gregory
Quarter Pounders, there’ll be Quarter Pounders, or Fillet-O-Fish is a significant brand around the world. Not as big in Australia, probably, but it’s significant.
Brett Kelly
They’re multibillion dollar sales brands in their own right. That’s probably not always that well known from people not close to the business. Last couple of things I wanted to ask about about the business before we wrap up are, I’ll come to Ronald McDonald House – but just before that, I think some of the headline stats are that, for example, in Japan, more than 25 per cent of orders to McDonald’s restaurants go through the digital platform, that the business has, I think got the second largest number of digital customers in the world behind Amazon.
One way from a business model point of view to think of McDonald’s is that it is a global platform for serving food that’s clean, and safe, and that increasingly there’s been the digital connectivity of that physical platform to where the customer lives, which is increasingly in their mobile phone. You’re big into Uber, you’re big into mobile delivery. How have you viewed digital? There’s a great book that we make all our people at Kelly+Partners read called Good to Great. The sixth part of a transformation of a business is technology as an enabler, rather than as a silver bullet. You guys have done that incredibly well. How are you going with your app, and the digital experience for customers in Australia and globally?
Andrew Gregory
It is a focus for us. It’s an interesting challenge for a business that is so bricks and mortar, even in today’s terms, but also in customer’s memories of McDonald’s. You know your first birthday party that you had at Macca’s a long time ago, you know the first time you went through drive-thru with your parents. So, we serve 2 million customers a day in Australia, and as a result, that’s an enormous amount of people already engaging in our business
before we even start thinking, or talking about the digital platforms that we have.
So, we’ve done a number of things over recent years to enable our customers to use technology. It’s given us a lot of challenge in our restaurants around how we serve those customers. A really interesting challenge is how we used to have, as you know, our point of sale registers on the front counter, and we had one register in drive-thru, and so you had a maximum amount of three or four orders coming into the kitchen at any one time. Now, with the digital platforms, you’ve got effectively an unlimited amount of orders potentially coming into the restaurant at any one time, and it’s a great challenge.
Brett Kelly
It’s very different now.
Andrew Gregory
Exactly. It’s a great challenge to have. It’s a challenge for us as a business. And I think we are one of those businesses that’s quite uniquely positioned to build off a strength of the physical customers that come into our business. As I said, just in Australia, 2 million people a day, and to use technology, not as the overriding solution, but as leveraging those 2 million people to help them use technology over the course of their normal life. We are working hard to make sure that the essence of the brand comes through. When you walk into a McDonald’s restaurant, and you get that feeling, and people are serving you, and they’re smiling, one of our challenges is to make sure that we can replicate that on the digital platforms that we offer as well, and we are working hard to make sure the brand stays strong through all of those different ways that customers engage with us.
Brett Kelly
Yeah, very, very cool. And finally, Ronald McDonald House is a very, very significant commitment from the franchisees, and the system to build these houses for patient care next to major hospitals all across Australia. How big now is that charity?
And you guys must be obviously terribly proud of the contribution that it makes.
Andrew Gregory
Yeah, I think it’s one thing we talk about sometimes, not all the time, and it’s a really important part of our system, and who we are. And you mentioned the franchisees. Not only do they raise money. I’ve known through a number of different houses, the franchisees have literally physically built some of these houses themselves over periods of time. It works brilliantly with our business, because it’s local. Our Ronald McDonald house is next to a hospital in a local town or a city. The main customers, or the main families, that use Ronald McDonald’s houses are from the country towns. Because their child has been seriously ill, they’ve had to go and get treatment at a city hospital.
And so, we call these houses or the chapters a Home Away From Home. It’s the point where the families are at their most vulnerable, probably the worst moment of their life, when their kid is sick and needs treatment. The RMHC is the place they come to get a bit of love and affection and care, and the financial benefits to the family is significant as well. We helped over 36,000 families last year across the different houses around the country; saved each of them perhaps thousands of dollars because the accommodation costs are looked after; they are looked after from access to food, and support.
It’s also a really great way that the social welfare support from government is funneled through, as well, and it just creates a better environment. I’ll never say it’s a better environment than what otherwise would be, because as you know the families are at their worst moment.
There’s another part of RMHC we don’t talk about enough, is called the Ronald McDonald Learning Program, which actually helps the kids that have been in hospital for a long time, and we provide tutors so that the kids can catch up on their schooling that they would’ve missed because they were in hospital for a long time. And that’s a crucial part of some young people’s development if they’ve had a serious illness. So, the franchisees do a brilliant
job. Our suppliers, their commitment as well is significant, and all the volunteers, and the chapters — we couldn’t speak more highly of all their contributions to helping those families.
Brett Kelly
So, Andrew, to finish up, you’re married, you’ve got some kids, how do you balance a huge job with family, and the challenges that that brings? I always say that the work’s easy. Raising kids, now there’s a challenge. How do you keep all that rolling along, look after your health, and make time for your friends?
Andrew Gregory
I’ve got two teenagers and my wife as well who don’t think I’m the boss, and I’m not the boss. So, it’s a good thing that you have a family. It keeps you significantly not the boss when you’re at home. Also I’ve got a good group of close friends that don’t allow me, or they don’t even think about me doing a job like this.
And at work, having different people who have different backgrounds, and experience, and skills is really important as well. We deliberately try in our leadership team to make sure that we don’t just have people like me who have been at McDonald’s for their whole career. We bring in external functional people as well, people who have had different experiences in leadership that really make sure we balance out, and get different thinking through our business. As much as we value the Macca’s experience, we know as a business we need to continue to change, and be challenged as well.
Brett Kelly
Yeah, fantastic. For all the people who listened to the podcast today, I hope you’ve found it interesting. I want to give Andrew a big wrap. He’s a very nice person, and obviously very capable of what he’s doing. I’ve really enjoyed the interactions I’ve had with him, and obviously the Macca’s system, and it’s an incredible thrill to have him share his insights, and to make time for us in what is no doubt an overwhelmingly busy career.
Andrew Gregory
Thank you. Cheers, Brett.
From Andrew Gregory – McDonald’s Australia – The Recipe To Successful Systems & Business which in turn is from podcast number 44 in the Be Better Off Show by Kelly+Partners.
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