The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Manager wins coveted award for performance
Bethany Bucci, general manager of the McDonald’s at 1725 Henderson Drive in Lorain, recently was named a Ray Kroc award winner.
The award is only issued to the top 1% of McDonald’s restaurant general managers in the world every other year.
“They told me I had a really good chance at winning it, and I didn’t know if I really did,” said Bucci, 37. “I came in one day, and I was told I won.
“I was super excited. I won a trip to Florida and $2,500 cash, so it’s pretty exciting.”
Bucci said the award is given to a general manager based on certain criteria.
“It’s a lot of things like guest count increase, sales increase, community involvement,” she said. “For community involvement, we donate to the Haven Center and a lot of our crew participated in the Mary Lee Tucker (Clothe-A-Child) program with the Morning Journal, and we donated money to that.
“We also had a lot of McTeacher nights with Lorain Preparatory Academy. The award is based on a lot of community involvement.”
Bucci said community involvement helps McDonald’s in a big way.
“It helps with increased sales,” she said. “If you help out the community, they will want to come by.
“We help each other out, and this is a great community.”
Bucci said she likes to make the store a good place for people to work.
“We have a big focus on retention, (and) making sure employees are happy,” she said. “We also offer a scholarship program. We offer (paid time off) for all of our employees. We also offer flexible hours.
“McDonald’s is just really super flexible with everybody. We have a lot of college students who come back and work here in between breaks. All of these guys here have made this possible. I would not have been able to do this without my team; I have a really good management team.”