ESG Governance, Stakeholder Engagement, Reporting, and Materiality

Our Brands

Restaurant Brands International owns four of the world's most prominent and iconic quick service restaurant brands – Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes and Firehouse Subs. These independently operated brands have been serving their respective guests, franchisees and communities for decades.

Our Approach

We’re committed to the simple principle of doing what’s right. As one of the largest quick service restaurant companies in the world, it is both our responsibility and opportunity to advance the issue of sustainability in the food service industry.

That’s where the Restaurant Brands for Good plan comes in.

It’s the framework for serving guests the food and drinks they love, while contributing to a sustainable future and having a positive social impact in the communities we serve.

ESG Governance

With over 30,000 restaurants and a global network of franchisees and suppliers, we know it’s critical to align all key stakeholders within and outside of our organization to drive our sustainability priorities forward. This work begins with an effective governance structure which allows for top-down guidance and bottom-up prioritization and execution.

Management
To further bolster our governance and risk management practices, management-level responsibility for ESG-related matters is held by our Chief Corporate Officer, who has assumed this responsibility since 2021. Our Chief Corporate Officer reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer and leads our ESG Steering Committee, overseeing the development and execution of the sustainability framework and strategy, as well as ensuring ESG oversight through his respective reporting structures.

Managing sustainability is a division between corporate and brand-led initiatives. A corporate-level team tracks stakeholder expectations and trends, identifies sustainability initiatives to support the business strategy, and highlights best practice across the group. The team maintains regular contact with senior leadership, guiding them on long-term social and environmental trends and the expectations of global stakeholders, engaging them to incorporate sustainability priorities as part of their business objectives. They also guide the company’s sustainability reporting, and work with several other business lines to oversee the preparation of sustainability disclosures. Regional brand presidents work together with restaurant owners to inform the company-wide business plan, and to execute and market sustainability initiatives at the brand level.

The importance of sustainability is also reflected in metrics linked to annual employee performance incentives across our business, as well as to executive compensation. In addition, executive compensation was tied to ESG metrics in 2022 related to both diversity and responsible sourcing.

Board of Directors
Our Board possesses a broad range of skills, qualifications, and experiences that enable them to provide effective oversight of our business. Our board members bring unique perspectives from various industries, including public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, and are culturally and geographically diverse, living across three continents. In 2021, our Board adopted a target of 30% women directors, which we met at the 2023 annual general meeting of shareholders.

Our Board has three standing committees — the Audit Committee, the Compensation Committee, the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee — as well as the Conflicts Committee.

Each of our Board’s committees operates under a written charter and is comprised solely of independent directors under NYSE and TSX listing standards.

The Audit Committee oversees ESG topics, including environmental and human capital management/goals, risks, policies and progress, and receiving quarterly updates.

Learn more about our Board →

Materiality

Restaurant Brands for Good is built on our first materiality assessment, which was conducted in 2019 to identify the most important sustainability issues for our business. We update the inputs to this assessment on a regular basis, benchmarking ourselves in relation to our industry peers and competitors, assessing guests’ priorities through consumer research and social media, capturing external stakeholder perspectives through non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) requests and investor inquiries, cross-referencing these topics against an assessment of business risks in order to gather key insights and concerns to consider, and additionally identifying the areas where we believe we can push the industry forward.

In 2023, we have been working with a third party to update our materiality assessment to further identify, assess and prioritize key ESG topics that may have impacts both on enterprise value and on society and the environment. This updated process includes engagement with both external and internal stakeholder, the results of which are mapped to help inform our priorities

Through the materiality assessment process, we identified and continue to evolve our key impact areas, which form our three pillars of Food, Planet, and People and Communities. We will focus on these pillars as we work to bring our sustainability vision to life.

Reporting

We are committed to communicating our performance regularly and transparently. The Restaurant Brands for Good section of our website is designed to be updated at least annually, and we also publish annual summaries of progress, and report against external frameworks, including GRI and SASB, in addition to reporting our greenhouse gas emissions and climate action strategy through the CDP Climate survey annually. We publish these reports on our Policies and Reports page.

Reporting Scope

Unless otherwise specified, information in these webpages pertains to Restaurant Brands International and its subsidiaries for fiscal year 2022 (January to December). References to “restaurants” or “system-wide restaurants” include franchised restaurants and those owned by us. Information in these webpages also excludes all operations in Russia, where the business is fully franchised and does not receive corporate support from RBI. Statements on our Restaurant Brands for Good website are based on information and assumptions available at the time of publication. We have relied on third-party sources, including vendors, for accuracy and completeness. All dollar amounts are in U.S. Dollars, unless otherwise stated.

Reporting Boundaries

Our Franchisees and vendors are independent business owners who make decisions for their own organizations, while maintaining core standards for our brand and customer satisfaction. We work in collaboration with them to raise awareness of ESG topics and offer tools for improvement. Together, we set objectives, monitor progress, and engage in shared innovation.

Contact Information

For questions regarding Restaurant Brands for Good and our reporting, please contact [email protected].

Stakeholder Engagement

Ongoing stakeholder engagement enables us to identify and understand issues, risks and opportunities that can affect Restaurant Brands International and our brands. It is also essential for us to proactively manage potential business operation impacts with key stakeholders.

This is a continuous process through which the views of individuals and groups are responsibly collected and used as important insights into our decision-making processes. We have a diverse set of stakeholders which require a variety of engagement methods, and we recognize that these methods must be representative, inclusive, respectful and focused in order to be meaningful. These include, but are not limited to, collaborations, surveys, and in-person events. The feedback we receive is essential in informing us of our material topics and guiding us to maximize our social impact.

Throughout the year, we engage with the following stakeholder groups:

Guests

Our big dream is to build the most loved restaurant brands in the world. We work hard, every day, to serve great food that our guests and our people love. As our main priority, we focus on understanding our guests’ needs through extensive guest research, including how they feel on topics related to sustainability. Across channels, from social networks to our specialized customer service teams, we strive to keep guests informed and make it easy to provide feedback, to foster a positive guest experience.

Restaurant Owners

Whether during our advisory board meetings or at our annual convention, restaurant owners are brought together to discuss business plans and share priorities. We believe in making sure all restaurant owners feel prepared to uphold the brand experience for our guests. Through engagement surveys, we verify our efforts and utilize our dedicated field teams on the ground, to share best practices and promote ongoing franchisee success.

Vendors

As a consumer-facing business, many of our products’ biggest sustainability impacts are located beyond our own operations, so our vendors are instrumental to the execution of our sustainability strategy. We engage with our vendors to gather feedback on new sourcing policies, understand where challenges and opportunities for innovation exist, and ultimately advance our responsible sourcing progress and commitments. We also engage with our vendors to certify their compliance to the standards contained in our Code of Business Ethics and Conduct for Vendors.

Corporate Employees

Our employees are committed to building the most loved restaurant brands and their inputs guide business decisions, maintain strong relationships with our suppliers and franchisees, and foster a safe workplace, all of which help us in achieving this goal.

Hosting townhall meetings and quarterly all-employee meetings allow for frequent updates and progress checkpoints to be communicated across the entire business. We also make sure we collect employee feedback, from two-way engagement to regular surveys, we care about what our people think and use their insights to influence our strategy.

Local Communities/Community Organizations

Along with our restaurant owners, we are committed to strengthening and giving back to the communities we serve through our brand foundations and by supporting local programs and issues that are close to our guests’ hearts. Through our foundations – Tim Hortons Foundation camps, the Burger King Foundation, the Popeyes Foundation and the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation – our brands are devoted to contributing time, talent and funds to build up the communities they serve.

Government

Through direct engagement or industry associations, we engage with policymakers to understand priorities and demonstrate regulation compliance. We work to inform legislative and government officials of our commitment, and advocate in the best interest of our brands.

Investors

ESG issues and goals have become an increasingly important topic of conversations with our investors. We know that those invested in our brands expect transparency regarding both financial and non-financial information, with an emphasis on the future direction of our brands. Through engagements such as annual shareholder meetings, quarterly earnings reports and direct meetings, we aim to regularly communicate updates while seeking feedback and responding to inquiries.

Industry Associations/Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs)

By engaging with a range of NGOs and industry associations, we gain external perspectives on policies that help inform decisions and support strategies. Memberships with industry associations allow us to share knowledge with and learn from like-minded businesses, supporting mutual interests and goals.