Darcy Gilbert, Vice President of Global Food and Beverage Sourcing at McDonald’s, leads a global team accountable for overseeing approximately $30 billion in annual spend across 46,000+ restaurants in 100+ markets, and a global network of supplier partners. At its heart, the team’s job is making sure the food customers love shows up in every restaurant, every day. Yet navigating such a vast system in a fast-changing world requires far more than simply leveraging scale.
In an exclusive interview ahead of her appearance at Expana’s Agrifood Intelligence Summit Chicago on November 17, 2026, Gilbert discussed how McDonald’s balances competing pressures while maintaining food safety, taste and quality, predictable pricing, and assured supply for the long term in an environment marked by numerous challenges, including commodity volatility, extreme weather, geopolitical conflict, and shifting trade policies.
The “Three-Legged Stool”
The scale of McDonald’s purchasing power might suggest that the company can dictate terms to suppliers and absorb disruptions with ease. But Gilbert pushes back against this idea. “With a system of our size there is a tremendous amount of scale that we can leverage. But I believe one of the misconceptions is that it is an easy thing to do,” she said. For Gilbert and her team, the real challenge lies not in procuring large volumes of food, beverages, packaging, and equipment, but in making the right sourcing decisions across a vastly diverse global footprint.
“The hard part is really making the right decisions on how to buy across those 46,000 plus restaurants,” she added. “Across the globe, we have about 100 different markets, each with unique challenges and customer expectations that shape how they operate.”
Gilbert further explained that cost remains obviously important, but it cannot come at the expense of food safety, quality, supply assurance, or operational execution in restaurants. Ultimately, it all comes back to the customer. Every sourcing decision must deliver the great taste, quality, and value people expect every time they visit a McDonald’s, she said.
This multidimensional approach to sourcing reflects one of McDonald’s founding ideas, the “three-legged stool,” which represents the relationship between the company, its franchisees, and its suppliers. Founder Ray Kroc believed the System is only as strong as the partnership among the three, and each leg must remain sturdy and balanced for the system to function effectively. For franchisees, McDonald’s seeks to provide both competitive and predictable pricing. For suppliers, the company works to ensure viable long-term partnerships. For the corporation itself, the goal is to assure supply and operational efficiency. When all three legs are strong, customers benefit.
“Trust across the three-legged stool is built through transparency, consistency, and a shared understanding of what we’re seeing in the market. When franchisees and suppliers have confidence in the information we’re sharing and the decisions we’re making, we’re better positioned to deliver predictable pricing, assured supply, and long-term value for the entire System,” Gilbert commented.
Building Confidence Before Disruption
Recent volatility in categories such as beef reinforced an important lesson. Anticipating risk is only part of the challenge. Equally important is ensuring franchisees and suppliers understand what we’re seeing, what actions we’re taking, and what it means for the business.
“Trust isn’t built during a disruption. It’s built before one. The more consistently we share market insights, risks, and actions across the System, the better positioned we are to navigate volatility together,” Gilbert said.
Converging Risks Across the Commodity Basket
The sources of global volatility affecting McDonald’s extend across the entire commodity landscape. Beef, cocoa, coffee, grains, edible oils, and numerous other ingredients have all experienced extraordinary price and availability swings.
Understanding the overlapping risks requires McDonald’s to think systematically about how vulnerabilities converge. “We’re not looking at commodities in isolation anymore. Our teams are looking across the entire basket to understand where risks converge and where they could have the greatest impact on our System,” Gilbert said.
That’s why McDonald’s focuses on anticipating the biggest impacts. “How are those risks coming together, how do we start to assess where the biggest impacts are, and how do we start to manage that more proactively? Do we have the right plan in place to make sure that we have flexibility and assuredness longer term as well?” Gilbert said.
Gilbert notes that, increasingly, some of the largest and fastest-growing risks sit at the very beginning of the supply chain. “Nearly every ingredient McDonald’s serves begins on a farm or ranch, and the farmers and ranchers who produce it face mounting pressure from weather extremes, disease, and fewer young people choosing to farm.” When a harvest falls short, the impact trickles down the chain to suppliers, then restaurants, and ultimately to customers.
To manage farm-level risks, McDonald’s has brought its sustainable sourcing team—which works with suppliers on soil, water, animal health, and farmer livelihoods—into the commercial food sourcing team. “We have made farm-level resiliency central to how we work. We have integrated our sustainable sourcing team into our commercial food sourcing team. We really need to make sure that the way we source for the long-term factors in weather, extreme weather impacts, and other sustainability-related risks that could impact supply,” Gilbert said. The goal is for commercial and sustainability teams to work collaboratively to anticipate risks and prioritize investments that keep the food customers love available and affordable for years to come.
Trade Flow Pressures
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has also disrupted shipping routes and elevated freight costs globally. For a company that sends ingredients around the world, this development prompted a reassessment of assumptions about logistics.
“We have to stay close to our trade routes, understand the potential impacts and restrictions that could emerge, and know where supplier capacity exists to support our needs. We need to make sure that we’ve got the right plan to shift and adjust quickly when those challenges come about,” she explained.
The question of trade policy and tariffs adds another layer of complexity. A world of rising protectionism and shifting tariff regimes has the power to fundamentally alter sourcing decisions and costs. However, Gilbert emphasized that McDonald’s approach cannot be reduced to simple cost minimization. “It can’t just be about looking at the cheapest cost. It’s so much more than that,” she said, adding that the company must remain agile and flexible.
“If you shift supply at McDonald’s, it’s a significant move, and it has impacts on our suppliers too,” Gilbert also noted. “I think we’ve struck a good balance in how we stay agile across our supplier partnerships to shift and adjust across the globe where we need to.”
“We’ve started to think about how we might want to source differently in various parts of the world to continue to provide flexibility. If we need to consider different sourcing options, we are open to doing that. But we do that with a full system lens in mind, and if conditions change, we need the ability to adapt quickly, but never at the expense of food safety, quality, or the commitments we make to our brand,” Gilbert went on to say.
The Value of Digital Investment
Unsurprisingly, digital tools and artificial intelligence have emerged as central to McDonald’s effort to shift from reactive crisis management to proactive anticipation. However, Gilbert emphasized that data and analytics alone do not drive value; the decision-making does. “The expectation today is that we become more predictive and less reactive. Digital investments and analytics help us do that, but the real value comes from making better decisions and anticipating what’s ahead,” she said. “We need our teams to focus on how we make smarter decisions, how we have those good discussions and debates on where we invest and how we invest for the business, instead of just pooling data. The decision making is where I think all of this lies and how we anticipate what’s coming.”
Hence, scenario planning represents a key capability emerging from McDonald’s digital investment. By bringing together demand forecasts and various market assumptions, the company can model potential futures and evaluate strategic options before they become urgent. “If you’re able to see the full picture and able to drive those scenarios, especially in some of the higher impact categories, it helps to clear the space and potentially consider ideas that we wouldn’t have been able to bring forward before and make that space for us to think bigger than we might have thought before,” Gilbert argued.
“We’re looking at linking up the decision making from a supply chain perspective to make sure that we have the absolute strongest capacity levels, the best inputs for our suppliers and for our teams, to make sure that we’re running as efficiently as we can.”
Problem-Solving in Chicago
Moreover, different companies face similar challenges but pursue distinct solutions. Gilbert strongly believes that supply chain excellence emerges through collective problem-solving. This fueled her motivation to speak and engage with industry peers at Expana’s Agrifood Intelligence Summit in Chicago, which is less than two months away now.
Thought partnership and knowledge exchange represent what Gilbert seeks to both contribute and gain from the event. “One of the reasons I’m looking forward to the summit is the opportunity to challenge our own thinking. The environment is changing faster than any one company can fully anticipate, and understanding what others are seeing helps us identify risks, opportunities, and ideas we may not have considered,” she noted. The opportunity to build professional networks and explore how data and analytics can inform collective decision-making also aligns with her vision for supply chain evolution.
The operating environment continues shifting at a pace that outstrips historical analogies. “It’s a different world than it was a year ago, than it was two years ago, and the idea that we all want to stay continuously relevant and keep challenging one another is something that I’m really excited about,” Gilbert said.
Three Priorities for 2027
Despite the volatility facing global supply chains, Gilbert says her team’s priorities for 2027 remain clear.
“First is continuing to assure supply in our critical categories, thinking deeper about how we are challenging status quo, anticipating risk earlier, and strengthening resiliency across our supply chain,” she said.
“Second is delivering competitive and predictable pricing by making better decisions, using data more effectively, and working differently with suppliers and the broader industry,” Gilbert explained.
Third, McDonald’s will keep embedding sustainable sourcing more deeply into the commercial strategy, supporting farms and the farming community at the foundation of its supply chain, while delivering the operational requirements the business needs today.
For more insights from sourcing leaders, join us at Expana’s Agrifood Intelligence Summit Chicago on November 17, 2026.
Image source: McDonald’s
Written by Simon Duke
