Haley Miller (SSE ’16) was still in the middle of the process of becoming a McDonald’s certified owner-operator when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. The approval process is demanding; it normally takes more than a year and involves monthly meetings with McDonald’s headquarters to prove an applicant can successfully run a restaurant and understand every aspect of the business.
“I was supposed to be showing them my results and how well we’re doing, but you have this pandemic going on,” says Miller. “I used that as a learning experience and said, ‘you know, if I can get through COVID and still have our restaurants be successful, I think that shows my dedication.’”
She proved instrumental in helping the restaurants she runs succeed despite COVID-19 restrictions by focusing on safety, retaining their workforce and on innovations such as the mobile phone app and food delivery. “You know, 2020 has been a year like no other, and I think that if you’re going to stay successful, you have to adapt, and that means looking at what people are leaning towards and you lean into that as well.”
Her hard work paid off. In April, Miller became one of the youngest approved McDonald’s owner-operators in the country.
Miller is the third generation in her family to join a career in the franchise. Her grandfather opened the first McDonald’s in Abbeville, which is in south Louisiana, and Miller’s parents now own 10 restaurants in the New Iberia/Lafayette area.
Though she regularly worked in her family’s restaurants while she was growing up, especially in the summers, it wasn’t until Miller was a senior at Tulane that she decided she wanted to go into the family business. She was waitressing at Fresco Café on Maple Street near the uptown campus. “I really enjoyed it,” she says. The next time she saw her father, at a Ronald McDonald House charity golf tournament, she brought up the possibility of following in his footsteps. “They never pushed me to do it,” she says, remembering that her father told her, “‘This has to be something you really want to do.’”
“If you’re going to stay successful, you have to adapt, and that means looking at what people are leaning towards and you lean into that as well.”
She graduated from Tulane with a degree in psychology, then received her Master of Business Administration from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, before she took on a leadership role at McDonald’s.
“I think these days I use more of my psychology degree on a daily basis than anything else,” Miller says. She focuses on training and development and believes in the importance of making employees feel appreciated. To that end, she has helped develop savings plans and incentives for workers. Most of the managers, office staff and maintenance team at her family’s restaurants have worked there for anywhere from 10 to 30 years. Miller says, “Sometimes people think of McDonald’s as just a first job, and they don’t realize that it is something that you can have a career in.”
Miller says her conviction that people come first was cultivated at Tulane. “One thing that Tulane taught me is that sense of community and realizing that the most important thing is people, and I’ve taken that with me in everything that I’ve done.”
“Sometimes people think of McDonald’s as just a first job, and they don’t realize that it is something that you can have a career in.”
At Tulane, Miller was a varsity pole vaulter. She tutored students in a New Orleans high school and later taught debate to local students. Miller says that by immersing undergraduates in the New Orleans community, Tulane encourages students to make a difference in their own communities once they graduate, something that she has taken to heart.
Now, Miller is a member on the board of directors for the Southern Louisiana chapter of the Ronald McDonald House Charities, a nonprofit group located in New Orleans that is dedicated to helping families with medical bills and housing. “Being able to combine my love for McDonald’s and my love for New Orleans, this is a perfect way to mesh these two.”
She is a member of the Women’s Operator Network (WON), which Miller describes as a group of McDonald’s women owner-operators who “have gotten together to share information and support each other.
“To have that support is really nice,” Miller says. “Sometimes in business, people see each other as only competition. That’s one thing I like about the Women’s Operator Network. We all want to be successful, but we all can, and we can help each other do it, by encouraging each other and supporting each other.”