Behind every Big Mac served at McDonald's in Kansas City is a business owner who ordered the bread, meat and special sauce.
"When you come into a McDonald's, you're not dealing with corporate. You're dealing with local, independent business owners and we are all small business owners," said Cassandra Savage.
Savage owns six of the fast food joints.
Jody Ward, Jill Hill & Terry Salinas speak about women's leadership in @KCMcDonalds restaurants. pic.twitter.com/SeYotauHQJ
— McDonald's KC (@KCMcDonalds) December 14, 2016
"We have women here that started as a crew person, worked their way into management and became key employees and purchased their own restaurants," said the franchisee.
In all, 11 women own 50 of the 150 McDonald's locations across the metro. Separate, their stores typically generate more sales and money than male-owned stores. Together, they generated $130 million in sales last year.
"As a woman in this business, there are certain things that we are confronted with that the general population isn't," said Savage. "We provide that support, education, training and advocacy. We look at profitability, leadership training."
Which just goes to show, that even in the world of fast food, there's power in numbers.
Savage's restaurant at 8915 Johnson Dr. in Merriam, Kansas is hosting a job fair Dec. 27.
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Terra Hall can be reached at terra.hall@kshb.com.
