For Dave Singelyn Jr., McDonald's is the family business.
He grew up working alongside his dad at his family's McDonald's franchise stores in New Jersey, wiping down tables and running the cash register.
Today, Singelyn is a second-generation McDonald's franchisee, helping his dad run the Singelyn Group, which has 29 stores – 27 of them in Western New York.
"We say we have ketchup in our veins," Singelyn said.
Q: How are customers in Western New York different from those elsewhere?
A: Nobody likes Shamrock Shakes the way they do in Buffalo and Western New York, which is awesome.
The Western New York area over-indexes by 240%. I think the next closest area in the country is a distant second.
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Q: Do you consider McDonald's a local business?
A: McDonald's Corp. does not own a single restaurant in New York, not one. They're owned by local business owners like me and my dad.
Some owner operators own more locations than us, some own one or two. We're local business owners that work together with our people day in, day out to provide opportunities. We're local business people that are trying to just be good neighbors in our community.
Q: What do you think of the term McJob?
A: It's been defined as a job leading nowhere, and I certainly am not a fan of that term. Because it's a job that my dad took at age 14 and was able to live out the American dream.
Q: Singelyn Group sold 20 restaurants in New Jersey and New York City to take over roughly the half the market here when a previous franchisee retired. What has that been like?
A: It was only a few months after I had moved to Buffalo and moved our business to Buffalo that the shooting happened at the Tops supermarket on May 14, and that was literally just blocks from two of our locations.
The whole East Buffalo community, without Tops supermarket, it's kind of a food desert. And so we were able to get this big, mobile McDonald's unit to come into the area and hand out hundreds of thousands of free meals for two days to the East Buffalo residents, which was great and showed us how we could be of value to the community.
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