McDonald's to invest roughly $3.5B to boost spending with diverse suppliers

McDonald's announced last week that it would include twenty of its largest US-based suppliers in its new Mutual  Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to boost purchases from diverse vendors.

According to the company, the MCDEI aims at increasing procurement spend with the selected companies by nearly 10% over the next 4 years. It further stated that the expansion represents a quarter of the company's domestic spend, about $3.5 billion. In 2020, McDonald's spent nearly $14 billion on its domestic supply chain, according to Black Enterprise.

"We're proud of our leadership position and storied history in supplier diversity, dating back to the 1980s," Marion Gross, SVP and Chief North America Supply Chain Officer, in a statement. "McDonald's partnership with our vast network of suppliers is not only fundamental to delivering on our purpose to feed and foster communities —it's also key to realizing our diversity, equity, and inclusion ambition."

The senior executive added that McDonald's is committed to creating more equitable opportunities across many industries that serve communities. The company considers diverse owned businesses to mean businesses owned by women, Blacks, Latinx, Asian, indigenous, veteran, LGBTQ+, and disabled persons.

Company officials stated that the MCDEI initiative is part of its global ambition on DEI created last year to "advance a series of new actions including setting corporate employee DEI representation goals and aligning leadership accountability for meeting these targets, implementing actions to dismantle barriers and increasing the allocation of marketing spend to diverse-owned media, content and production partners."

The restaurant chain has also announced, in recent months, that it plans to increase spending with more diverse groups of media companies after legal actions and critics of its treatment of Black franchises and workers.

Reginald Miller, McDonald's VP and Global Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer said that company diversity, equity, and inclusion actions have been endorsed at the top of the company and the recently created policies hold CEO Chris Kempczinski directly responsible to promote core values, create cultures of inclusion, and improve representation.

"Our strategy was focusing on three pillars," said Miller in an interview with BE. "One, we represent the communities that we serve. Two, that we build a culture of inclusion and belonging, and three, we actively engage in dismantling barriers of economic opportunity."