Urban planner turned entrepreneur receives McDonald’s 365 Black Award

8th July 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

“By the time I began my career as a McDonald’s franchisee in New Orleans, I had become completely enraptured with the city,” says Florida native, Henry Coaxum, and this year’s recipient of McDonald’s 365Black Award honoring the achievements of the chain’s restaurateurs. Coaxum is the proprietor of seven area McDonald’s restaurants and is known for his philanthropy and commitment to developing the strengths and talents of his school-age and career employees.

“Before Katrina,” Coaxum says, “I knew the names and aspirations of 90 percent of the employees at the three restaurants I then owned. That’s important because turnover is always a factor in this business, but one must understand that people don’t quit organizations, they quit other people. So, knowing what someone’s hopes and dreams are makes a big difference. When people know that you care about them, they look different, they feel different, and they work different.”

Coaxum’s desire to invest in more than simply his company’s bottom line began more than 30 years ago as development director for the country’s first African American history museum. “I wrote a grant for a position at the DuSable Museum in Chicago and was convinced to take the job, once the grant came through, by Dr. [Margaret] Burroughs, who founded the museum.” Coaxum says the grant, like many others he had written, provided an annual salary of just $25,000.

“I truly enjoyed the work I was doing in those days as an urban planner and nonprofit administrator, but I didn’t have a 401K,” Coaxum says, who began his career in the mid-1970s in the administration of Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley, as a city planner developing model approaches to urban growth. “I remember there was a time when we were fighting to get a three percent raise, but cities across the country were broke and they weren’t able to pay public employees. I may have gone, as an urban planner, during the four years I was there from $25,000 to $30,000.”

But Coaxum’s work in the 1970s and ‘80s earned him nationwide recognition, including a nod from Who’s Who in Black America. “We were doing some exciting work at DuSable and so my name had become known because of that and for the work I had done to address the needs of urban areas,” Coaxum says. “But the money just wasn’t there and so I began to look toward the private sector.” Coaxum examined 10 of America’s top performing companies in the early 1980s, including Apple, IBM and Xerox, but finally settled on a fast-growing restaurant chain out of Illinois—McDonald’s.

“People thought I was crazy to leave what I was doing to become a manager trainee at McDonald’s,” Coaxum laughs, “but they didn’t see what McDonald’s was doing and the growth potential for the firm. By 1979, McDonald’s stock had split twice and in those days I didn’t know what a stock option was.” Through the years, Coaxum held various management positions at McDonald’s, including a period where he was charged with the operation of more than 130 restaurants.

“But then there came a time when I had to decide that if my career was going to grow with McDonald’s I was going to return to Chicago to work in the corporate office or strike out on my own in New Orleans,” Coaxum says. “Well, I had fallen in love with a woman from New Orleans and New Orleans women don’t leave—they convert you. So, that’s when I became an owner/operator.”

In 2002, Coaxum purchased the very restaurant at which he began his career almost 20 years before. “The McDonald’s restaurant at Read Boulevard and I-10 was the first restaurant I owned,” says Coaxum, who would go on to purchase six more and eventually serve as president of the southern region for the Black McDonald’s Operators Associations and serve on a number of nonprofit boards. Coaxum’s business model also includes increasing wages for high school employees who earn better grades and providing scholarships for workers enrolled in area colleges.

“When I worked for Dr. Burroughs,” says Coaxum, “my job was to find ways to get corporate and individual donors to support our mission. But she wasn’t satisfied with me learning how to develop donor contacts and fundraising techniques, Dr. Burroughs wanted to put me in a position that would not only allow me to ask for checks, but to be able to write checks. Well, now I can write checks of my own and I am happy to give back because I am simply the product of people who decided to take the time to get inside the head of a knucklehead kid named Henry Coaxum.”

Coaxum will receive McDonald’s 365Black Award in Hall H of the Morial Convention Center on July 5 at 10:00 a.m.

This article originally published in the July 7, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.