COVER STORY
GOLDEN ARCHES’
GOLDEN GIRL! CHARLENE GATT meets a powerhouse who not only climbed the corporate ladder and now owns three McDonalds franchises, but also manages to run a busy household with three young children.
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BUSINESS WEST
JENNY Sadler has leapt her way up the food chain – literally. She’s gone from a teenage McDonalds crew member to assistant vice president of McDonalds Australia and most recently has turned franchisee, with three of her own stores in the West. It all started when she first donned the McDonalds uniform aged 15 for after school work at the Emerton store in New South Wales. It then turned into an accidental career when she deferred an accounting course at university to get into McDonalds management and never looked back. “I kind of just fell into it,” she said. “There were ongoing opportunities and I kept getting promoted up the management ranks. By 21 I was a restaurant manager, I joined the corporation a few years later when I moved to Melbourne and I continued to go up. “I always thought I would go back and do university, but at the end of the day McDonalds always offered me programs and training. There was nothing outside of McDonalds that I thought I could do something better. “I’m so glad (I never went to university). I would not be a good accountant. I could look at the numbers, but sitting behind a desk is not my forte, and that’s why I think I love Maccas so much, because the job is people, whether it’s your internal people or your customers. It’s all about people every single day, and you either like people or you don’t.” Now at 41, it’s fair to say Ms Sadler is a jack of all ttrades in all things McDonalds. has been a supervisor, a franchise She ha consultant, then took up a senior business c management position looking after half of the manageme McDonalds chains in Victoria – all by the time she turned 26. she looked after the franchise part Then sh business for a year, before moving of the bus to Adelaide and running the South Australia 2001. market in 2 After a year in Adelaide, Ms Sadler was promoted to Director of Operations for the region of Australia – including South southern re
Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. The same year she was again promoted, this time to assistant vice president. The promotion came while she was pregnant with her first child. In 2007 Ms Sadler had the opportunity to become a franchisee and she jumped at the chance, taking over St Albans and Taylors Lakes, and then the Avondale Heights restaurant in 2009. The change of pace was a welcome one for Ms Sadler and her husband Peter Sadler, who runs Peter Sadler Transport. “I had a small child, and we wanted more children, and the next step for me would have been to leave Victoria and go overseas, and it wasn’t in the scope of where we thought our lives should go,” Ms Sadler said.
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I really value hard work…
“I used to have to cross the West Gate Bridge and jump on a plane every week before, so this is really nice to drive 15 minutes. It’s a nice lifestyle change. I still work very hard. “It feels nice to live and work in the same community.” The Sadlers have since added to their family 11-month-old twin girls, and credits a nanny and lots of family support for helping the two businesses and the family run seamlessly. “Our lives are both flat out. We couldn’t do it otherwise (without the help),” she said. “The number one thing is I want to have a happy and healthy life. I want to be there to watch my kids grow up, hopefully have grandchildren.” Meanwhile, taking on the three restaurants forced Ms Sadler to go back to her roots. “When I came back (to franchise), I re-learnt everything. I re-trained how to do everything from the ground up because I