McDonald’s franchisee Herbert J. Thomas III is honoring his family’s legacy through his entrepreneurial endeavors.
Herbert became an McDonald’s operator in 2020 and a year later had the chance to become and owner. Today, he maintains two restaurants in Ithaca, NY, and two in the Auburn area.
“I’ve been up there for the last two and a half years. Lots of opportunity,” Herbert, 44, told AFROTECH™ in an interview. “The restaurants have not been able to live up to my expectations yet. However, there’s been a lot of of work, a lot of improvement, a lot of successes that we’ve had over the last couple of years.”
Family Business
Understanding Herbert’s path to Auburn requires looking at his early exposure to franchising, which began with his parents, Nellie and Herbert Sr., who own and operate several McDonald’s restaurants. The couple had been familiarized to this pathway from two family uncles who Herbert said were some of the first African Americans to purchase a McDonald’s. Nellie had been working at a bank before considering franchising and would be the first between the pair to enter McDonald’s training system. She was later joined by her husband, who had worked for a shipping company in New Jersey.
“My mother was very much the push behind my parents thinking that this is something that that they could be successful in,” Herbert said. “I think my mom was the first one to start with going through McDonald’s training system. McDonald’s has a pretty detailed, extensive training system that they put their operators through just to make sure that perception and quality and things like that are kept up. So my mother went through that. My father ended up joining her and they went through McDonald’s training program and got their first opportunity in McDonald’s in Ohio. So when I was seven years old they packed up all their things in New Jersey, moved to Ohio. We lived out there for about seven years.”
Nellie and Herbert would not remain planted in Ohio for long, eventually selling their restaurants to open up new storefronts in New York and New Jersey. Today they reportedly own 10 restaurants, per the National Owners Association.
Decision To Franchise
While in high school, Herbert would work at one of his parent’s restaurants during the weekends and in the summer. While following in his parents footprint was an idea that often crossed his mind, he did consider other avenues, later graduating from Xavier University with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and minor in psychology.
“I was working in a laboratory for a little bit during that first part of the transition,” he recalled. “But found out that laboratory work really wasn’t for me. My first job in the lab was to cut the heads off of mice pups and extract their hippocampus ’cause they were doing studies on Alzheimer’s disease. So extremely interesting stuff, but not really my cup of tea.”
Herbert explored other pathways later working as a financial planner at Ameriprise Financial and at small boutique financial planning firm. However, when the market crashed he did not feel as if the sector was a great fit for young Black men.
“It wasn’t as palatable for young, Black men to be pitching investment advice to the people that were really the clients that I was targeting to try to make sure was making as much money as possible,” he explained. “I really wasn’t appealing to the client base I was going after.”
He then furthered his education at Fordham University, a private university in the Bronx, and obtained an MBA in public accounting and master’s in taxation. He then spent several years working in PricewaterhouseCoopers tax department, focusing on hedge funds and private equity fund until 2015.
“Part of what pushed me towards the decision of getting into taxation were the conversations around the dinner table of my parents were in business. So part of operating a business in the United States, or really in any of the developed nations, is there’s taxes that are tied to doing that. And in business, you’re always trying to make sure that you’re not paying any more than what you should,” he noted.
Herbert then made the decision to work under his family after they grew half of their portfolio restaurants. He believed working in the family business would be where he could make the most impact. After nearly six years, he decided to scale his interests in McDonald’s and was aided by its Next Generation Training program.
Upholding Legacy
Today, he also hosts community events, including a give-back day that provided free fries after a team member at his restaurant led the team to its first state championship, and a Christmas toy drive.
“I’m looking forward to having more successes and making sure that we’re having well-run restaurants and being places where the community can feel happy about [and] comfortable in taking their children and sending their children to come and work with us, and be that first job and expose another generation to the work world,” he said.
Herbert is also proud that he has been able to foster career growth at the company, expanding the organization team from six to 10. In a full-circle moment, the restaurant has also allowed him to continue generational wealth building. His sister is on payroll working in its human resource department handling labor laws, and his brother assists with maintenance requests to ensure equipment is functioning properly.
This reflects one of Herbert’s core values: creating opportunities.
“I want to have the biggest impact on the people around me that I possibly can,” he said. “I have a couple hundred guys that I work with on a daily basis. So being able to see people with the capabilities as well as the desire to do more for themselves, being able to select those guys and help them move up through the ranks and make more money for themselves. Buy their first cars, buy their homes, send their kids to college. That’s really what I enjoy the most about being an McDonald’s owner and operator.”
