In the article “McDonald’s is offering free ‘Thank You’ meals to teachers across the country,” the writer highlights a McDonald’s initiative to give away free meals to educators for the work they have been doing. Vamping up a program they had in place that gave away 12 million free thank you meals to first responders and healthcare workers.

In an effort to continue supporting the teacher community they decided to expand this program. in the past appreciation treats McDonald’s has been running “initiatives like McTeachers’ Night, coordinating food drops at educators’ homes after school, and free meals during the pandemic. Additionally, McDonald’s is also invited other people to show their love for  educators in their lives by using the hashtag on #ThankYouMeal on Twitter, TikTok or Instagram.  They even had a way for people to send e cards to express their thanks.

From a PR perspective, this type of initiative is a great way to maintain the positive charitable reputation of McDonald’s.  I think that the press release that provided the shell for this story did a great job of describing both the current initiative and also the past ones. It allows the story to take a positive tone which helps progress a positive story on the McDonald’s corporation. I think inititatives of this nature are a great allocation of funds because it is providing a way for McDonald’s to be looked at as a company that values front of the line workers at every level.