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Elite leadership isn’t just about vision—it’s about action, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of growth. At Fortune’s exclusive Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings and what truly sets outperformers apart.

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top

Elite Leadership: Unlocking Growth at the Top Pannel at Cannes

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At the Fuel Up With Fortune panel in Cannes, Snap Inc. EMEA President Ronan Harris and Mars Wrigley North America President Anton Vincent share their top leadership learnings.

COOs require actionable strategies for prioritizing today's unique operational challenges, from shifting trade policies, to recession indicators, and the potential fallout of lagging consumer sentiment and spending. Through data-driven insights, real-world case studies, and practical frameworks, this session will tackle best practices for how operations leaders can address cost structures, prioritize talent development, and leverage AI capabilities to build sustainable and resilient competitive advantages during volatile times.

LEADING THROUGH VOLATILITY: WHERE SHOULD COOs FOCUS THEIR ENERGY AND TIME?

For mega consumer brands like McDonald's and Levi’s, customer satisfaction isn’t just a goal— it's a business imperative. In this session, Mason Smoot will reveal McDonald's secret sauce for  digital transformation, from AI-powered drive-thrus to next-gen restaurant innovation.   Jason Gowans will dive into Levi’s data and tech-driven approach to winning customers through personalization that fuels lasting loyalty to one of America’s most iconic brands.

GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO WOW YOUR CUSTOMER

Well, good morning and um we're ending the bulk of the conference on a really fun note um consumers take for granted all the technology that goes behind serving them in stores or in restaurants and today let's talk a little bit about um how that's evolved in the last few years. I mean jobs in restaurants and in retail have changed dramatically in the last few years because of expectations on the retail front. You know, the, the involvement of e-commerce has changed what store workers do on a daily basis and did in restaurants. So from each every point of view, what has been the biggest change in how technology is affecting the customer experience? Why, why don't we start with, with, uh, with Jason over there. Um I would say the biggest changes is really internally, which is not to think about the channels, um, but to really try and put the customer at the center. So, um, an example for us would be um omnichannel shopping. I mean, 80+% of in-store purchases start with an online experience. And so, you know, to be an aspirationally a world class omnichannel retailer, you really got to be thinking about that journey end to end and not just what happens in the four walls or not just what happens on your.com site. And over at McDonald's I would say that we find that uh customers are just more demanding than than ever and their expectations continue to raise and they raise much more quickly and the one way to meet that is through technology and our focus has been on how do you create the largest consumer platform which means you have to have the most efficient restaurant platform to to have. Those two pieces of meat, but I think the changing expectations and redefining what their needs are is, is what we're seeing most. Well, let's just follow up on that. So what do you think, uh, when you say their expectations have risen in what way is it, is it faster, uh, services that the ability to order more quickly and not have to wait to make your way through a ute and get to a cashier? What is it? I think if you think about our history, we started the, the drive-through from an innovation standpoint as a matter of fact, right here in Arizona in Sierra Vista. And from drive through it then became an expectation that I want more control in how I order, how I receive my food, how I pay so that was kiosk that was being able to pay digitally and today it's a desire for a little more one on one personal interaction. So if I'm gonna share my data with you through through your app, then what benefit do you provide me from a uh offers that are important to me, from understanding when I'm arriving to get my food. Uh, and having it prepared for me, so I, I think those are the changes in expectations. It's, it's a little more one on one expectation that if I give you something about me, you'll meet the needs I have. And over at Levi's, you, you guys are, um, you're not getting out of, uh, wholesale and department stores and things like that, but you want to sell a lot more through your own site and your own stores. um, how's that affecting? I mean, where's technology helping you in that way? Yeah, so. You know, Levi's by this point is more than 170 years old and as you point out, for, for most of our history, um we've sold men's jeans to um um to other businesses, to department stores and and other outlets. Um, and part of our strategy is what we call DTC first. So at this point, about half of our business is direct to consumer, the other half being wholesale. Wholesale is still massively important. We want to be excellent at that. We want to be a great partner with our, with our wholesale partners. Um, but for our DTC first ambition, um, we know that we got to be excellent. And I would say that. Probably one of the biggest things that's had to change internally is truly building that that focus on the consumer. So as Mason just pointed out, you know, really understanding who these people are, what they care about, um, when you're producing products, um, what is the complementary product that they might otherwise that they might also be interested in. It's really going deep and obsessing about the consumer in a way that when you're a wholesale. Uh, business, you're one step removed from the consumer. Um, and so for us, it really is about building, um, uh, that expertise around the consumer. And so how do you know that these changes are working but also worth it because you know there's uh there's so much there can be a tendency maybe to adopt implement technology changes, but how do you know that they're worth it? Um, well, we, we just, uh, actually just put a piece out just a couple of weeks ago that outlined that we, we've seen 12 consecutive quarters of double digit, um, growth in our DC in in our econ business, uh, and also in our our direct. Consumer channels. So you know if you're looking just through a financial lens we we'd say it's, it's certainly working, um, but there are other things that that we look at too. We have almost 40 million customers now or fans in our red tap program um around the world, um, and so that's another um uh uh way in which we think about is this strategy working or not, um, the extent to which customers want to have a relationship with Levi's. Um, the other thing we look at obsessively is is customer satisfaction, CAP, what's happening in the four walls, what's happening online, um, because sometimes, you know, the, the, the financial metrics themselves are a bit of a lagging indicator and CSAT tends to be something that can be an early warning signal where we've got opportunities. I would agree. I think Jason said it well, being obsessed about the consumer and understanding what they're telling you, so 1 in 4 transactions in the US is done through our my my uh McDonald's rewards app so it tells you if they're using the app, then it's, it's providing and meeting a need that they have. Equally 50% of those are through mobile order and pay. So it's, it's providing a convenience. I mean you look at it on the, the crew side and, and our, our restaurant team. So are we providing technology that makes it easier for them to do their work and reduces some of the cognitive load and CSAT customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction scores all are moving in the right direction? OK, well, that's good to hear because we titled this session something about wowing people with technology and I, as a consumer. You know, sometimes bells and whistles are fine, but I just want if I order something online and you say it's going to be delivered at such a date that it's actually that that's gonna happen, you don't need to make it Star Wars of of retail or you know um using a mobile app to order coffee or a meal, you know that it doesn't become mayhem when you arrive at the restaurant. So you know, do you think it, it, it's easy to lose sight of of. You know, maybe get blinded by all the shiny things and, and, and lose sight of what you really need. It it can be if you're, if you're not paying attention to what the customers telling you. So in our case, the number one reason why customers might be dissatisfied with their experience shopping Levi's is product availability. And so in response to that, one of the ways in which we use technology was we built an application called Back Pocket. um, and so this is an application, a tool that the stylists in the stores use. Um, to help the customer find the perfect pair of jeans that may not be in the four walls. With that, they have access to the consumer's profile, so they can understand what their fit preferences are and hopefully help them walk out the door happy. Either come back, pick the product up, or we'll ship it to them. One of the things that I think is especially neat about that particular application is that it was a tool for the stores that was built by the stores. So the product manager for the application, she's been with Levi's 13 years, 10 of those years she worked in the stores. So She knows intimately what the true needs are of the store. So in that scenario, it's not us building technology or being this, you know, the Star Wars of retail. It really is grounded in what is the consumer problem and what does the store need to solve that problem. I think whenever you bring any kind of technological solution for for a customer, you have to. Be very quick at understanding whether it meets the need, and we at times when we first introduced our app customers let us know where there was, um, uh, it made it too difficult, too many steps. If it took me too many steps to order a cup of coffee. Then we were making it too difficult, so we've had to go back and make some of those improvements and continually look at it. I'm gonna come to you all for some questions in a moment, but um, let's move a little bit away from the consumer and, and let's talk maybe about the aspects of technology that are not consumer facing but are just as important, your employees and things like inventory management and supply chain. Um, first of all, how do you, how do you get, uh, employees to embrace all these changes and, and, uh, and adopt them? Maybe I'll start, uh, so, um, I, I think first of all that the changes that we work on and develop are informed by what employees tell us are our pain points, so they're very clear in in communication with with crew and and restaurant managers when you're in the restaurants, but also through surveys where the pain points are in executing so we try to build solutions that that solve. All those pain points and I think one of the things we've learned over the last couple of years is that many of the omnichannel options that we've given consumers didn't necessarily connect well to the back of the house so you've you've heard us talk about this most efficient restaurant platform and that is getting it right in the back of the house to make it easier for a crew and managers to execute. Similar, I I think um there was a woman up earlier Rashby in the financial services and she talked about, I think 50, 40, 50% of their time was spent on their sales folks were spent on back office type tasks and very similar in in a retail environment. Um, you know, when you think about what we call our stylists, folks who work in the stores. Um, a large percentage of their time is focused on non-selling activity. And so how can you increase the amount of time that they're spending in front of customers. And so a really simple example would be, um, in our stores, everything is RFID enabled, so all of the genes all have RFID tags. And so, you know, if you're someone like me that comes and works a shift during the holiday season to try and help out. You know, I'm walking around with a with a mobile device able to find the right fit, the right size to get it out in front um so that we can serve the customers, um, but again, these are examples that are very focused on the key pain points in the store. Well, I'm glad you brought up working in the store because, uh, a few weeks ago I interviewed, uh, Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright who was here yesterday. And I asked him what's the thing you miss most now that you're CEO and he said, as a COO I was in stores 4 days out of 5, and now it's 1 day out of 5 if I'm lucky. I really, I'm afraid of losing sight of what is needed at the restaurant level. How often do you guys visit your stores and restaurants respectively and just to make sure that you know you're, you're, you're not removed from from the reality of what's needed. So I'm in our restaurants all of the time. I mean, we, we actually have a restaurant in our office building, so you're, you're always close to the consumer, what's happening. But I'm responsible for the 14,000 restaurants across the US, so being around the US in restaurants, talking to crew and managers, so 2 to 3 days a week is, is constantly, yes. I, I'm not responsible for our, our store network, but uh obviously support it and, you know, I'm a consumer. I, I love fashion, I love brands, I love um understanding consumers, so I'm out there every week, um. My local Levi store at University Village in Seattle. I was there last weekend and opened the door and the door was rattling and one of the screws was a little loose in the in the door handle and Sam, the manager and I were talking about, all right, let's get that fixed. Um, so yeah, love being in the stores. Um, are there any questions in the audience? Um, so when the mic comes to you, just introduce yourself, please and let us know who you're with. Thank you. Sonia Huffman La logistics, um, just curious as you're thinking about, um, two things one, the data you're receiving from customer surveys are you seeing that becoming a little a little less valuable to you and if it is, what are some of the. Other channels you're trying to get uh uh customer data from and to um have you found that you're aggregating so much data you almost don't know what to do with that data and what value it's actually adding to your business and how are you thinking about that? I'll maybe offer a quick anecdote, quite the opposite. I think supporting the digital and technology teams, it's very easy to gravitate to the behavioral data, how many transactions, you know, what's happening with the funnel, all that kind of stuff. Earlier this year, actually at the end of last year, we started seeing some anecdotes in the CSAT surveys about site speeded. And when we talk with the tech teams and we go through our operational meetings, we can see while the metrics are telling us that we're fine. And that went on for longer than I'd like to admit, probably a month or two where there was starting to be a groundswell of feedback in the CSAT surveys that we were having performance issues and yet the metrics were not telling us that we had performance issues. Long story short, we dug in with new observability stuff, found that there was indeed performance issues with the site, um, and we obviously then started acting on it, but that took longer than it ought to, and it was a lesson for us to remember that on the other end of this stuff, there's real people that are having real, um, you know, a real experience with you, whether it's good or bad. So for our case, I think that taught us that we got to pay a lot of attention to the CAT surveys in addition to the behavioral stuff. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I think the the consumer information we get customer information is invaluable and continuing to refine the questions so that you can really get underneath it I think becomes important. But then mixing it and comparing it to what you hear from your crew and then what you actually see in the way customers purchase because sometimes you might think they're saying this, but then you see it connects in a problem they're seeing and how they purchase something so bringing it all together I think it becomes even more important. Let's talk a little bit about the, well, you know, I have to get to a question about AI. So, um, the pace of technological change is accelerating and your employees have to keep up. Is are you using AI to um uh as a training tool so that to get people up to speed more quickly than before or what what is the role of AI in all this? Yeah, so I, I would say we're, we're learning and using AI in a lot of different, different places so we use it on the customer side as an engine on how do you, how you what you offer customers, uh, from a, a, um. And offer a promotion we use it on the crew and customer side uh if you think about we have a hiring app called McHire, so it takes a lot of the work off of the the crew and management team and hiring it does the recruiting, um, promotions follow up, and it has an AI assistant called Olivia and the AI assistant responds and answers questions so it takes some of the the work away from the restaurant teams and I think we know that AI. And automation is going to be the key to even tighter one on one relationships with the customers, but even more so on the cruise side. Yeah, and, and Levi's is really becoming a retailer much more than it ever was. So, so are you using AI to for client telling and and customer service and things like that? We are across the business. So if we think about kind of three broad constituents, we've got our consumers, we've got our corporate employees, then we've got our stylists in the case of stylists. We actually are rolling out today um and this was born out actually last year we did a hackathon where one of the folks built an application for the for the stylist where they could get information on denim education. Denim is obviously a very involved in personal purchase. Not everybody understands the fits or or why they should care about salvage, and so we saw an opportunity to help teach and and be an instructional tool for our stylist. So we Tested that last year real real quick test. Um, today we're rolling that out to more to 10 stores and we plan to roll that out to um to more stores. So the idea here is how can we supercharge their, their selling abilities um around denim. So on that note, um, thank you, Jason and Mason, that was, uh. Not on purpose by our our programming team, but I love it that the names rhyme, but just to show you how McDonald's and Levi's can really come together, not just at beautiful, uh, fortune events but also to make beautiful, um, aprons, uh, Levi's has made this for our friends at McDonald's, so. And I don't know, do you want to give a bit of a detail on, well, this is obviously a very beautiful apron. I hope you wear it, but one of the things I was telling these guys is I believe, and I'm going to sound like a pretend I'm an expert, but I think this is change stitch embroidery. So this is all hand stitched by one of our tailors, um, and they make really beautiful custom. Um, products and if you go into one of the Levi stores, um, there is a tailor shop and they can do really amazing things for you guys on your truck jackets or or your jeans. So clearly I'm gonna be the envy of my team when I get back. Hope so. That's very much. You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

How much does it really cost to fly private? From jet cards to fractional ownership, we break down the business model behind NetJets — the world's largest private jet operator. With demand for private aviation booming post-pandemic, here’s what it takes to fly like a Fortune 500 CEO — and why it’s becoming more popular than ever.


The Economics of Flying Private: How NetJets Became the Timeshare of Private Jets

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How much does it really cost to fly private? From jet cards to fractional ownership, we break down the business model behind NetJets — the world's largest private jet operator. 

What does it actually cost to fly private, and why are more people doing it than ever before? Private aviation is a multi-billion dollar business and companies like Netjets are changing how the ultra wealthy move. Even in the smallest aircraft type in our program, you're talking today about an initial capital investment of more than $800,000 to buy a piece of an airplane. We have something like 40% of the Fortune 500 that are not just customers. And as major commercial airlines are trying to win back premium customers, can commercial aviation companies successfully keep them? NetJets doesn't sell private jets. It sells fractions of jets. Customers buy a share as little as 1/16 of a specific aircraft model. That idea, splitting jet ownership like a timeshare, unlocked a new market. Today we operate nearly 1100 aircraft which if you were comparing us to a commercial airline would make us the 2nd or 3rd largest on the planet. Unlike charter services, it owns and controls its fleet, allowing tighter control over quality, scheduling, and safety. The average Net customer flies with us for about 75 to 100 hours per year. Our typical customer will be. Somebody who is a principal of a privately held company, we have something like 40% of the Fortune 500 that are our Netjet's customers. Flying with Netjets doesn't come cheap. A fractional ownership share on a light jet like the Penom 300 starts at around $850,000 upfront, plus about $325,000 per year in operating costs for 50 flight hours. For those who want a more affordable and flexible option, the NetJet's card starts at $215,000 for 25 hours annually. That $215,000 jet card, that's the cost of 4 down payments on the average American home. Within the shared ownership model, we really have three cost components for the customer. You have the initial capital investment, which is a one-time investment where somebody's buying a piece of the airplane, and then they pay a monthly management fee. If you owned your own airplane, you'd have pilot salaries and you'd have mechanics salaries, and you'd have hanger rent. So in our model, you're sharing that across the other members of the program. And then every time you fly we bill you the variable hourly costs associated with flying that trip from A to B, which covers things like the fuel expense of the aircraft, the ground charges, and the handling fees and the things that would go into operating an airplane from A to B. That business model caught the attention of Warren Buffett, and in 1998, Berkshire Hathaway bought Netjets and has held on to it since. You see in the luxury travel segment overall people are making more of an investment in experiences than in things that certainly has been a tailwind for us, you know, if I'm being honest, the commercial experience has not gotten any better over the last several years, and that has driven more people to want to fly Net jets. During the pandemic, demand for private air travel soared as people feared crowded airports and packed planes. In the US, business aviation traffic in 2021 hit record highs, surpassing the 2019 levels, and in 2021 saw over 3.3 million private jets worldwide, a 7% increase over pre-pandemic levels. Only about 10% of the people who met the financial norms or averages of private aviation were actually flying privately, and COVID certainly unlocked some portion of that addressable market. And then the big question was would they go back to the airlines when the pandemic subsided and masks came off and vaccines went in arms. After the initial COVID boom, many private airline companies saw slumps in profits, but in Q1 of 2025, Berkshire Hathaway reported a profit bump in its service division, which had contributed to its aviation services. For Netjets, we're operating at 40-45% larger than we were in 2019, so we've maintained record retention rates. Major commercial airlines are trying to claw back premium travelers by rolling out redesigned business class cabins, faster boarding, and high-end lounges. But for some flyers, the best perks aren't enough. Anonymity is key to our business. One of the appeals of flying net jets versus owning your own airplane is that you're virtually untraceable. Whether you have concerns about appearances or whether you have concerns about safety. Netjets can provide that in a way that. You can't get owning your own airplane. As the demand for private flights increases, so does the visibility of their impact. Each trip emits many times more carbon emissions per passenger than a commercial trip, and that's drawn growing scrutiny, especially as more celebrities and CEOs are called out for frequent short haul trips. When Taylor Swift's private jet usage was tracked online in 2023, it sparked a wave of backlash and highlighted the growing divide between convenience and climate responsibility. Now with the business booming, even the industry's biggest players are under pressure to address the carbon footprint. Sustainability is at the forefront for our industry right now, and the way that we're addressing it at Netchets is we are the largest buyer of sustainable aviation fuel in the industry. We offer carbon offset programs for our customers. We offset all of our own internal company flying, so anything that we do for maintenance flights or training flights or anything like that, we buy the carbon credits to offset. As commercial travel faces continued pressure from rising costs to growing delays, demand for more efficient discrete options isn't likely to vanish. Private aviation remains a niche but profitable business fueled by clients who value control more than cost.

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