As Executive Chairman of the largest independent McDonald’s franchisee in the world, Woods Staton leads a company that touches nearly every corner of Latin America and the Caribbean. With more than 2,400 restaurants across 20 countries and territories, Arcos Dorados employs over 100,000 young people in the region, making the company’s operation a youth training ground and a familiar part of daily life. But Staton sees the company’s role going far beyond serving good food fast.
As a global brand, there are several key areas of focus for McDonald’s when it comes to environmental and social impact. However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, three urgent challenges converge: reducing youth unemployment and a large informal job market, enhancing food safety and nutrition, and addressing the environmental impact of agricultural supply chains. For a business with such scale, these are not conceptual challenges – they are everyday realities in every market in which it operates. “We’re not just in the food business,” Staton says. “We’re in the future-building business because the communities we serve are our ecosystem.”
But scale, Staton knows, is both a powerful vehicle for positive impact and a potential source of risk. He is constantly wrestling with questions like: how do you serve millions of customers a day while taking care of the environment and creating job opportunities for young people in Latin America? How can Arcos Dorados be part of the solution to the most pressing issues of today’s world?
The answers begin with having a purpose to guide the company as it supports its global brand programs and becomes a force for long-term, positive social and environmental change.
Scale has always been a competitive strength for Arcos Dorados. But in today’s world, scale also brings responsibility. This is perhaps most apparent in the company’s relationship with young people. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, youth unemployment is often more than double the local unemployment rate. Even when they find work, young people are often caught in a cycle of informal employment that offers little in the way of job security or long-term opportunity.
Arcos Dorados is one of the region’s largest formal employers, offering first-time job opportunities to people looking to begin their careers. The company’s current CEO, COO, and the Presidents of both the Brazilian and North Latin American divisions all began their careers working in one of its restaurants, and there are countless other executives within the organization who got their start as McDonald’s crew members. Even for those who do not stay with the company for the long term, working at Arcos Dorados provides important skills that will help them advance their future education or employability, or both.
“When young people don’t see a path forward,” says Staton, “the whole region loses momentum.”
Another important challenge in the region is changing public expectations around food. While quick service restaurants once symbolized convenience and affordability, today’s customers also care about whether their food is safe and healthy. They want to know where the food comes from and how it is made. For many families, restaurants like McDonald’s are among the few places that offer dependable, affordable, and nutritious meals, which makes the company’s responsibility even greater. The question for Arcos Dorados is not whether quick service is good or bad; it is how it can be better, more balanced, more transparent, and more aligned with the nutritional needs of a region facing growing health disparities.
On the environmental front, Arcos Dorados is aligned with one of the McDonald’s brand’s biggest priorities: climate change. There are more than 41,000 McDonald’s restaurants across the globe, offering a menu largely based on animal protein. As a part of this global system, Arcos Dorados holds a significant environmental opportunity to contribute to the brand’s climate targets. Although beef accounts for the largest share of the brand’s emissions, the solution to this problem is not just to swap beef for chicken or some other source of protein. Beef demand remains high around the world, so the company is rethinking sourcing to reduce the environmental impact of beef production. Arcos Dorados is engaging and working with its suppliers to change the way cattle are raised and promote trade-offs across a deeply entrenched food chain.
Together, the challenges of youth employment, nutrition, and climate change ask a complex question: how can Arcos Dorados leverage its scale to be a source of opportunity while positively impacting society and the planet?
“Employees receive structured training, coaching, and clear advancement opportunities.”
Arcos Dorados is not trying to single-handedly solve Latin America and the Caribbean’s social and environmental problems. Nor is it addressing these problems from the outside. Its Recipe for the Future strategy focuses on using its everyday operations and partnerships with local suppliers, sub-franchisees, governments, and NGOs as levers for broader change.
This begins with its approach to youth employment. With one of the largest networks of formal jobs for young people in the region, Arcos Dorados treats its restaurants as launchpads. Employees receive structured training, coaching, and clear advancement opportunities. New hires get 30 hours of training, and with 68,000 people beginning their journeys each year, this adds up to more than two million training hours annually. Programs are built in collaboration with NGOs and vocational schools to ensure the content is truly relevant in the real world, helping the company go well beyond its operation to reach more than 400,000 young people every year.
“We’re not hiring people just to cook burgers,” says David Grinberg, Vice President of Corporate Communications. “We’re hiring people to build careers.”
This belief extends beyond training. The company has redesigned its internal communications to connect with a younger workforce, using platforms and formats familiar to digital natives and inviting employees to shape the content themselves. More than 130,000 people have registered for the MCampus Community free online courses, which are open to the public and created to offer development opportunities in areas such as personal finance, marketing, customer service, and software coding, among others.
To address shifting expectations related to food and nutrition, both McDonald’s Corporation and Arcos Dorados have evolved their menus over the years. They have made substantive changes to reduce sodium, fat, and sugar content, cut the use of artificial colors and preservatives, provide fruits and vegetables in all kids’ meals, and include clear labeling to make it easier for customers to make informed choices.
“These shifts aren’t about marketing; they’re about building long-term trust and providing transparency about our ingredients, their origin and their nutritional value, while ensuring that food safety remains paramount in our strategy,” says Gabriel Serber, Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainable Development.
The third element of transformation is environmental. With beef being their primary emissions driver, McDonald’s and Arcos Dorados are rethinking both supply and sourcing. Satellite monitoring of the beef supply chain ensures no deforestation happens in critical regions of South America, with some 3.67 million hectares monitored monthly, covering more than 17,000 farms and more than five million heads of cattle. The company has used its scale to expand the availability of fresh cage-free eggs in the region. Locally, it has also reduced plastic packaging to 10% of total materials and has renewable energy contracts in place to cover 50% of its regional energy consumption. By installing equipment to harvest rainwater and air conditioning condensation in its restaurants, the company has reduced its usage of fresh water in daily cleaning tasks. Every year, Arcos Dorados also collects over four million liters of cooking oil to be used for biofuel recycling, while reverse logistics collection of used cardboard packaging expands the company’s circular economy model. All these programs contribute to the McDonald’s System’s global climate goals.
Together, these efforts do not represent a pivot; they represent integration. Youth, health, and climate are no longer treated as separate work streams. They are part of a single strategy to have a positive impact on the lives of the people the company touches and the places it operates.
“Every shift, every meal, every decision – those are chances to do better,” says Staton. “And when you serve millions, ‘better’ adds up fast.”
Complex problems do not need perfect solutions to make a difference.
Arcos Dorados’ Recipe for the Future strategy offers insights into how Woods Staton and the company are turning global scale into local impact:
Focus on issues you can touch directly, like youth employment or food access, and use your operational footprint to deliver change where it matters most.
Reach isn’t just a commercial advantage. When paired with intentionality, it becomes a way to close gaps in opportunity, nutrition, and inclusion.
Sustainability is more resilient when embedded in frontline jobs, core products, sourcing, and incentives, rather than solely focused on isolated campaigns or philanthropic projects.
Create space for employees, local NGOs, and community voices to influence programs. Participation strengthens trust and relevance.
Complex problems do not need perfect solutions to make a difference. Lead by being transparent about trade-offs, acting early, and adapting as you learn.
As Arcos Dorados looks to the future, its focus is on turning these opportunities into systemic change – not by scaling a single initiative but by weaving social impact more tightly into the fabric of its business.
On the employment front, the company is deepening its investment in young people. New programs are being co-developed with schools and NGOs to link restaurant experience to broader career paths. At the same time, leadership pipelines are being expanded and extended to ensure more of the region’s youth, irrespective of gender identity or background, move from their first formal jobs to successful, long-term careers.
Nutrition continues to evolve beyond reformulation. Arcos Dorados is reimagining how it communicates with consumers, shifting the focus from compliance to empowerment. Digital tools and storytelling will help people make informed, affordable choices while positively impacting society and the planet.
Environmentally, the company is exploring regenerative sourcing models and blended finance strategies that can make sustainable beef and infrastructure upgrades more accessible across the region. The goal is not just decarbonization, it is creating a more resilient food chain from farm to tray.
But perhaps the most powerful lever lies in culture. Staton and his team are embedding purpose into training, recognition programs, and leadership development to ensure the next generation of managers understand the broader role those restaurants play in society.
For Arcos Dorados, quick service is not just about what is served – it is about who is served, how they are empowered, and what kind of future the business helps to create.
This case series was developed as part of a research project supported by Capgemini Invent.
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