Working at Macca's a family dream for Warrawong's Dwarte family

Now he's fulfilling his dream taking on the licence for Warrawong McDonald's with his wife, Sharnae.

Mr Dwarte started out in Macca's when he was 14 years old. It was a natural first job for him, with his mum a 45-year veteran of the Golden Arches, and his parents have been licensees for more than 30 years, running several stores, the first in Warilla in 1993.

They expanded in 2011 with McDonald's Warrawong and Shellharbour Food Court and in the Wollongong Central Food Court in 2012 and 2018 respectively.

Mr Dwarte bought the Warrawong store in March 2024 but said, despite taking over a part of the family business, he had to start at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

"So I started like anyone else as a 14-year-old crew person, so I started out the back area, worked the grill made burgers," he said.

Eventually also working out the front and serving customers, Mr Dwarte was made a shift manager while he completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Wollongong.

"Throughout that time I progressed through the ranks in management and eventually became a manager of the Warrawong store."

Mr Dwarte has ambitious plans to grow his crew of 130 so he can provide jobs to locals in the area.

"We'd love to grow that number to 150 and get those people straight from the local area," he said.

"We've got a few people that have been with us for 10 years or more.

"We've got a mixture of part-time, full time and casual employees. A lot of the people that we employ this has been their first jobs and it's the first exposure that they've had in their working careers."

Warrawong McDonald's works with local schools and hosts career days and mock interviews, to better prepare young workers for "what they might face" in an interview.

They also work with employment agencies to cater for people with a disability who are looking for work.

"There's no barrier to working for us, we try and pull from a number of different areas and try and give everyone an opportunity."

Another aspect where Mr Dwarte wants to expand is sponsorship, with the store already sponsoring Port Kembla Football Club and looking at other events and teams in the local area they can help out.

Now a father himself with a four-year-old and two-year-old, Mr Dwarte says while "they're a number of years away" he would be "pretty proud" if they became third-generation employees.