Brigitte Graf has been a McDonald’s Franchisee for 25 years and runs three restaurants in Central Switzerland. For years she also wrote every reply to every review herself. This is what changed.
McDonald’s franchise
Three restaurants in Central Switzerland. 30 employees and five Shift Leaders at the restaurant we filmed.
Business type
Quick service
Locations
3 restaurants
As Franchisee
25 years
Measured in ThreadWork from the group’s reviews YoY 2025-2026
September 2026
175 reviews
1,358%
September 2025
12 reviews
Average rating and number of reviews received in the month, all restaurants together.
Reviews92%
September 2026
50 Pp.
42%
September 2025
Share of five-star reviews among the month’s reviews, all restaurants together. Measured in ThreadWork, not a public rating.
Meet Brigitte and Nicolas, in their own words
Franchisee
Brigitte opened her first McDonald’s restaurant in Bülach 25 years ago. Today she runs three restaurants in Central Switzerland. She sets the standard for every reply and keeps the final say.
Brigitte Graf
Franchisee
Store Manager
Nicolas is Store Manager at the newest of the three restaurants, in Küssnacht am Rigi. His weekly check takes about 15 minutes. He spots recurring feedback early and follows up with his team.
Nicolas Wirth
Store Manager
Twenty-five years ago, when Brigitte Graf opened her first McDonald’s restaurant in Bülach, nobody wrote online reviews. Once they came, she answered every one herself — early in the morning before opening, or late in the evening after a long day in the restaurant. A customer who takes the time to write, she says, deserves a reply written with the same care. At some point that care stopped fitting into the day.
Reading a review is quick. Writing a reply that respects the customer and protects the restaurant’s name is not. Brigitte sat down to it early in the morning before opening or after the restaurant had closed. Replies had to be prompt, too. A reply three weeks late tells the customer that nobody read what they wrote.
“My job is not to answer reviews. That is how it slowly became a problem: when do I do it?”
Brigitte Graf, Franchisee
Finding out what kept coming up was a job of its own. Every week, usually on Monday or Tuesday morning, Brigitte read the reviews of all three restaurants. She sorted them by topic — the fries, say — and discussed recurring problems with the respective Store Manager. Waiting a whole month would have left too much for the Shift Leaders and Store Managers to work through.
Nicolas Wirth is the Store Manager of the newest of the three restaurants, in Küssnacht am Rigi, with 30 employees and five Shift Leaders. For him a bad review used to arrive as a screenshot in a message, about twice a week. Then he searched for the original, worked out who had been on shift, and followed up. Every review was its own small investigation.
Brigitte did not expect a drafted reply to meet her standard. She had seen tools whose replies read the same every time, and a reply like that tells the customer he wasn’t taken seriously. So she gave ThreadWork her list.
No adjective twice in one reply. Capitalisation and commas correct. Sentences that connect, not a row of sentences starting with the same word. A closing wish that changes with the day — a good start to the week on a Monday, not the same weekend greeting every time. Her corrections became rules, and every reply has followed them since.
“It wasn’t easy with me, because I have very high standards.”
Brigitte Graf, Franchisee
At first, she read almost every reply before it went out. Over time, she read fewer of them herself, because the replies met her expectations. She still reads critical reviews and decides for each one whether to edit the reply or approve it with a click.
“I read fewer and fewer of the replies, because I noticed they are simply right for me. Now, week after week, month after month: wow — that is a reply I would have written.”
Brigitte Graf, Franchisee
The weekly manual sorting is gone. Brigitte opens all three restaurants in one view and switches to a single one with a click. Reviews arrive grouped by topic, with how often each came up and where. What to do about it stays her call, because she knows the restaurants.
Her test for the screen is simple. She wants to understand it without reading a manual.
“I can look at all three as one unit, or with one more click at each restaurant on its own.”
Brigitte Graf, Franchisee
Nicolas checks in the quiet hour of the afternoon, when the lobby is calm. The week’s recap shows where the restaurant stands and which topics repeat; if the same thing comes up three times in a week, he sees it that week and acts on it. He had been wary of yet another tool. In his case it was set up in minutes and the reports reached his inbox from the first day.
“It worked perfectly from the beginning. I was convinced quite quickly.”
Nicolas Wirth, Store Manager
Not free time, she insists. The time goes back into the restaurants. She talks to customers, listens to the team and works on local marketing — the parts of the job she says you can never do enough of.
“Hospitality is the A and O for me, and so is local marketing. You can never do enough of either. Many guests know me and say: you’re the one whose name is on the receipt.”
Brigitte Graf, Franchisee
She reads less and sees more. The replies meet her standards, the ones that need her reach her, and the overview across three restaurants takes a few clicks instead of a whole morning. Nicolas’s check takes about fifteen minutes per week.
| Metric | Before | After | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reviews a month, all restaurants | 12 | 175 | Sep 2025 vs Sep 2026 |
| Average rating of the month’s reviews | 3.9 | 4.8 | Sep 2025 vs Sep 2026 |
| Five-star share of the month’s reviews | 42% | 92% | Sep 2025 vs Sep 2026 |
Average rating, number of reviews and five-star share for reviews received in September 2025 and September 2026 across Ebikon, Dierikon and Küssnacht. Küssnacht had no reviews in September 2025. Measured in ThreadWork, not a cumulative public rating.
Quotes are translated from Swiss German.
Decide what a good reply is before anyone writes one. Brigitte’s list — varied wording, correct punctuation, a greeting that fits the day — is what made the replies hers. Write yours down; it becomes the rules.
Keep reading the critical ones. She reads fewer replies, not none. Approving with a click is a decision she takes per review, not a setting she forgot about.
Look at all your locations before you look at one. The combined view tells you whether a topic belongs to one restaurant or to all of them; the single view tells you whose shift.
Count the hours, not only the reviews. Reply work spread across early mornings and late evenings shows up in no report. Name what it costs you now; that is the number to beat.
ThreadWork works on your reviews from the first week — your rules, your locations, your call.
Brigitte Graf opened her first McDonald’s Restaurant in Bülach 25 years ago. Today she runs three restaurants in Central Switzerland. The newest opened in Küssnacht am Rigi in October 2025, with Nicolas Wirth as Store Manager.
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