McDonald’s RE team 2025 internship — Corporate HQ
Hi all. Currently interviewing for McDonalds restaurant RE development team at their global HQ but wanted to get some advice. Obviously McDonalds is a globally known name, but how would it look on a resume for someone interested in CRE? Role would involve development and acquisitions, but it seems that people that work in similar roles at other companies typically stick in the fast food retail niche for real estate. If I am interested in working for a multifamily developer down the line, would this still be a solid opportunity? Any advice about working for corp McDonald’s or CRE would be appreciated.
This is for an internship btw.
Yes this is a great opportunity. Obviously if you have other options such as internship at a dev shop, then that would be a more relevant internship, but if not, McDonald’s corporate RE is still a great role and will help you get future roles in dev, REPE, brokerage, AM, etc…I have a friend who interned in the corporate real estate arm of a BB (the bank’s internal real estate team, not their investment/lending team), he leveraged that into a FT position at a well known CMBS investment manager, and is now at the most coveted firm in the whole wide world the “BlAcKsToNe”
Also, trying unreleased food items for R&D was in the job description which fires me up. Anyways, thanks for the input
Name checks out
From my experience… an internship is an internship. You’re doing it to learn and show that you were proactive during your undergraduate years. As long as you put 100% of your effort into the internship while you’re in it with the goal of learning… then any internship will be great.
The biggest thing is how you’ll spin it in future interviews. If you’re able to spin it in a way that relates to the role you want to go into… then it’s a great internship. Most recruiters understand that internships are hard to come by but if you landed one, worked hard, and network with people you meet. You’ll go very far.
My advice…. Unless you get a better offer… take whatever internship you can get your hands on.
Completely agree, while pursuing my MSRE, I interned at some super boutique capital advisory shop that barely had any deal flow, but I would build out models from scratch on any prospective deals even though it wasn't asked of me just so I could spin it in interviews. If you're goal is to work in development then try to work on as many development tasks as possible. Luckily, development is the broadest form of real estate because you experience 95% of all functions within real estate - anything from acquisition/financial modeling to putting budgets together or tracking budgets to lease up is part of the development process.
I would argue McDonald’s corporate real estate is one of the better corporate real estate experiences you can get if you want to pivot to acquisitions and/or development. They are one of the largest landlords in the world, so I would think you should get plenty of acquisitions and development experience. A lot of times F500 corporate real estate mostly has to deal with efficiently managing a company’s existing office portfolio of leased properties and looking for new spaces to lease. I’m sure that’s probably a decent job but not something most aspiring real estate investors necessarily want to be doing. McDonald’s checks the boxes of 1) being in an industry that requires a lot of real estate and 2) desiring to own most of their real estate, which is what I would want in a corporate real estate job.
One concern I would have about McDonald’s, though, is that they are already a pretty mature company that already owns most of their real estate, so I’m not sure how much acquisitions and ground up development work there will be going forward.
Also, not really sure how it would translate to your aspirations in multifamily but I’d think it’d be a great start for pivoting into any kind of retail focused investment/development role. Since it is only an internship, I don’t think it matters that much at this stage. It’s a tough hiring market, this is a good brand name, and you should be getting acquisitions and development experience. I think it checks enough boxes to be considered good experience. It’s not like you’re spending the summer flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
I think they have $40+ Billion in RE assets. The position will definitely be legit... It's also an internship, just try to learn as much as possible about what makes a good retail investment.
It’s just an internship so you can always pivot. McDonald’s is an extremely large landlord and one of the active firms in the retail space. You’d get good looks from a number of firms and I’m sure you’d learn a lot from the role.
Didnt MCDs have some program called Burger University. People cracked jokes about it, but it was basically an executive training program and many of the applicants had like Harvard MBAs and/or like McKinsey experience. Supposedly its like a less than 1% acceptance rate. Id imagine alot of their programs are pretty strong in building your resume.
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