Chicago City Wire

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski's got a nod from Illinois gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey for his comments on Chicago's rising crime rate.

Bailey, who recently said that "criminals are not afraid of JB Pritzker," agreed with Kempczinski's statement.

"McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski is correct," Bailey said in a statement. "Chicago is a city in crisis. We cannot continue to ignore the rise in crime and pretend that it will simply go away. When companies are telling you they are having trouble getting people to work in Chicago because they are worried for their safety, we should take them seriously. I know I do. Protecting our citizens is my top priority. I am the only candidate in this race voters can trust to protect our communities. JB Pritzker has failed and the safety of our residents is too important to trust him with another four years. We need a leader who has the resolve to take on these challenges and find solutions. I am that leader."

Kempczinski called out Chicago over its crime problem last week in comments to the Economic Club of Chicago. He noted McDonald’s employees in Chicago are afraid to ride mass transit and everywhere he goes he is confronted by the same question: "What’s going on in Chicago?" Kempczinski, a Chicago resident, said the company sees the crime problem worsening daily.

“We see every single day in our restaurants what’s happening at society at large,” he said, according to the New York Post. “It’s not going to be something that McDonald’s can solve on its own. We need to be able to do it with the public sector as well.”

Kempczinski’s comments come after several companies announced they would be moving away from the city. A number of big corporations cited crime rates when deciding to leave Chicago. Citadel Securities noted that the decision to move from Chicago to Miami was heavily influenced by security concerns.

“The firms are having difficulty recruiting top talent from across the world to Chicago given the rising and senseless violence in the city,” Zia Ahmed, a Citadel spokesman, told the New York Times, Chicago City Wire reported. “Talent wants to live in cities where they feel safe.”

Other firms to leave Chicago include Boeing and Caterpillar. Chicago is home to McDonald’s corporate base and has the second most McDonald’s of any city with 111 locations, according to ScrapeHero. Across Illinois, the chain has 651 locations or a location for about every 19,500 residents. The chain has over 35,000 locations in more than 100 countries worldwide.

McDonald’s opened a $250 million corporate headquarters in a return to the city in 2018. It was based in Chicago until 1971 when it moved to Oak Brook after which the corporation saw most of its expansion, CNBC reported.

Oak Park native Ray Kroc popularized McDonald’s and grew it into the world’s most prolific burger joint, ushering in the fast food era when he opened the first franchise McDonald’s in Des Plaines in 1955. Kroc was described as the "Henry Ford of the service industry” by one Harvard Business school professor, according to the Oak Park River Forest Museum.