Sarah E. Burke

Chief Executive Officer The Martin-Brower Company

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Sarah E. Burke is Chief Executive Officer of The Martin-Brower Company, the global supply chain partner to McDonald’s and other quick-service restaurant brands. Founded in 1934 and now part of the Reyes Family of Businesses, Martin Brower runs 79 distribution centres across 18 markets, employs around 14,000 people, delivers to more than 26,000 locations worldwide, and moves upwards of 695 million cases a year. It is a business in which the product is reliability: a restaurant that cannot open because a delivery did not arrive is a failure with no offsetting upside, so the entire operation is built around consistency rather than optimisation. Burke has led it since January 2022, and reached the role by an unusual path. She joined in 2012 as General Counsel, having practised corporate law, and then moved out of the legal function entirely, running the company’s Canadian business, its international lead markets, and finally its United States operation before taking the chief executive’s seat.

Career Highlights

• Named Chief Executive Officer of The Martin-Brower Company in January 2022 after a decade at the company.
• Leads an operation spanning 79 distribution centres in 18 markets, roughly 14,000 employees, deliveries to more than 26,000 locations, and over 695 million cases a year.
• Chairs the McDonald’s North America Logistics Council.
• Served successively as President of Martin Brower’s Canada division, President of International Lead Markets, and US President before becoming chief executive.
• Joined Martin Brower as General Counsel in 2012 and transitioned from the legal function into line operating leadership.
• Oversaw the 2023 refresh of the Martin Brower brand identity, in the company’s ninetieth year.
• Practised corporate law as an associate at Winston & Strawn LLP from 2008 to 2012.

Professional Journey

Burke trained first in finance, taking a bachelor’s degree at Susquehanna University’s Sigmund Weis School of Business, and then in law, earning a Juris Doctor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She began her career in private practice, joining Winston & Strawn LLP in 2008 as a corporate associate, where the work was transactional corporate law rather than litigation.

In 2012 she moved in-house, joining The Martin-Brower Company as General Counsel. Martin Brower is a rare kind of business: privately held, part of the Reyes family’s portfolio, and defined almost entirely by a single deep customer relationship with McDonald’s that has run for decades. Its competitive position rests on being trusted with an operation where failure is immediately visible in the customer’s restaurants. A general counsel in that setting is close to the commercial substance of the business, because the contracts are the operating model.

What happened next is the part of her career that distinguishes it. Rather than staying on the legal track, she moved into line operating leadership, becoming President of Martin Brower’s Canada division. From there she took the President role for the company’s International Lead Markets business, responsible for its most significant markets outside North America, and was subsequently named US President, running the company’s largest single operation. Each step widened the operating rather than the advisory remit, and the sequence amounted to a deliberate grooming for the top job.

She was appointed Chief Executive Officer in January 2022. Her tenure has covered a period of considerable strain and change in food logistics, from pandemic-era disruption through inflation in fuel and labour and the continuing shift in how quick-service restaurants take and fulfil orders. In 2023 the company refreshed its brand identity for the first time in many years, with a new logo and visual language built around a doppler pattern evoking the sound of a passing truck, and Burke’s framing of the change was characteristically about continuity rather than reinvention: a great deal had changed over the years, she said, but the constant was the team and the culture built around it. She also chairs the McDonald’s North America Logistics Council, the body coordinating logistics practice across the system Martin Brower serves.

Education

Susquehanna University, Sigmund Weis School of Business

Bachelor’s degree, Finance

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law

Juris Doctor

Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management

MBA