B+E Talks with Kris McDonald of Checkers & Rally’s Drive-In About the Pandemic’s Perfect Storm

For the restaurant industry, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic was an existential threat that provided an opportunity for evolution. Kris McDonald, vice president of development for Checkers & Rally’s Drive-In, works with restaurant franchisees and was in the eye of what she calls “the perfect storm” that caused chains to close kitchens, stop indoor dining and rely on drive-throughs and delivery. The result was new and potentially better ways of running restaurants.

“It’s given us a good opportunity to look at our basics and see how we improve,” McDonald says in the latest episode of a video interview series Women in Net Lease with B+E’s Camille Renshaw and Katherine Wadleigh-White. 

As with many who work in net-lease, McDonald, who is based in Tampa, stumbled into the industry by accident, while working on health care in a large large firm, but ended up falling in love with it, she says. She enjoys negotiating and the strategic aspect of deals. Most of all, though, she says she loves working with franchisees and seeing them successful.

“It’s about finding the right real estate and finding right franchisees – people want ROI so we find out ‘what do your sales have to be?’,” she says. “We’re connected with the small entrepreneur community in the U.S. The motivation is helping a small business grow, and seeing the successful opening of a new franchisee.”

The one-tenant aspect of net lease does not necessarily impact how a deal is approached. “The key to success is to add value to both sides of the transactions … It doesn’t matter that it’s a single tenant, it matters how you bridge the gap to add value. We have several corporate restaurants and what we look at is the sales-to-rent perspective – you have a unique perspective, on both sides of the game as well as the franchisee perspective,” she explains.

Legal training is useful in conducting negotiations and is perhaps one reason why so many women working in net-lease have backgrounds as lawyers. 

“When you’re trained as an attorney it’s very analytical. I think that helps us to be used to conflict. You’re trained to resolve the issue,” McDonald says. “I consider that the contract of a deal is the back stop for the deal. It shouldn’t be used in negotiations because at that point the relationship is damaged. I like to pick up the phone and talk about it.”

Also, please stay tuned for coverage that will be coming out of our annual Women of Influence conference being held July 24th through July 26th. For more information about that event please visit here.