LYNN — A general manager of the McDonald’s restaurant on Boston Street received a McDonald’s Corporation’s Ray Kroc Award as one of the top performing managers globally and was celebrated by her crew and the owners of the franchise on Monday morning.
Claudia Maribel Galdamez, the general manager of the McDonald’s at 60 Boston St., was among the three Massachusetts managers selected out of 390 candidates for the 2021 Ray Kroc Award for her years of dedication to customers and staff.
The award, named in honor of the McDonald’s Corporation founder Ray Kroc and established in 1999, recognizes the best of the top 1 percent of hardworking restaurant managers who represent 60 markets in the U.S. and beyond.
Galdamez, 37, has been working for McDonald’s with the same franchisee for more than 18 years since she came to the U.S. from Guatemala. She started as a regular crew member at a restaurant in Winthrop and worked in various locations from Dorchester to Brighton. For the last three years, she has been managing the Boston Street location.
Galdamez said that she was able to build a career at McDonald’s because she always tried to learn more and challenge herself.
“I never stop learning something new,” said Galdamez.
Her favorite part of the job is working with people, both customers and her crew members.
“First of all, we need to train good people to deliver good service to the customers,” said Galdamez, who added that she tries to make her employees feel like they have a family at the restaurant.
“She has always shown so much drive and dedication for her job,” said Lindsay Wallin, co-owner of the McDonald’s restaurant on Boston Street, about Galdamez. “She is outstanding.”
The restaurant is open 24 hours and Galdamez works different shifts; she makes an effort to get to know all her employees on every shift really well to make sure that the standard of the service is equally good across the board, Wallin said.
“I know that anything I hand off to her is going to be done right and she will handle it with care,” said Wallin. “She is one of a kind in terms of taking care of the customers and the community.”
The restaurant is recognized quite often by the McDonald’s Corporation as being one of the higher-volume locations, Wallin said. During the pandemic, the restaurant had a very high volume of deliveries, more than any of the other eight restaurants Wallin owns, and Galdamez was able to keep up with it. The restaurant is also recognized as a very successful drive-through location in terms of the number of cars going through the drive-through and service times per car. In 2019, the restaurant was one of the top-10 drive-through restaurants, according to the McDonald’s Corporation. Plus, the restaurant brings the highest sales out of Wallin’s nine restaurants.
In addition to being passionate about growing the business and satisfying customers, Galdamez is committed to serving the community. The company does a lot of fundraisers for Lynn’s elementary schools and Galdamez is very involved with executing them.
“We offer them in all of our restaurants. This restaurant is by far the most successful (with fundraisers),” said Wallin. “A lot of the community comes out. She is really really good with making sure we serve everybody quickly. And she is always very well prepared for all of the events we hold at the restaurant.”
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Galdamez provided free meals to her employees and their families, as well as to first responders. She also held a successful mobile COVID-19 vaccine clinic that was free to the public.
“We are all very lucky to have her working with us,” said Wallin.
