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Title: McDonald's : Behind The Arches by John F. Love ISBN: 0-553-34759-4 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 July, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (20 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Made me crave french fries............
Comment: I read and enjoyed Fast Food Nation a few years ago and wanted to read more about McDonalds as a corporation that began quite modestly and is now an internationally recognized symbol. This book while critical at times is far less disparaging than Fast Food Nation.
From a business perspective this book offers insight into managemnt, advertising, product development and expansion. I admit I skimmed the long passages on fanchising. The best parts are those describing the fateful meeting of the McDonalds brothers and Ray Kroc who took their idea of trasty, well produced fast food and spun into a national phenomenon.
I enjoyed the chapter dealing with how McDonalds made its foray into the international market as well as how new products were developed. The best ideas came from the franchisees. Kroc was convinced little poundcakes would be top sellers and also introduced a "Hula Burger" of cheese and pineapple ?!? The idea of a chicken entree was oringinally to be a deep fried chicken pie and the mcnuggets began as onion bits deep fried.
It was interesting to read and I liked seeing the evolution of a corporation.
Rating: 5
Summary: Possibly the best book ever written about a company!
Comment: Excellent Read! A great story about Ray Kroc and his quest to build the McDonald's empire. This is the best book I have read about a company. It contains many stories about the people responsible for the growth of McDonald's. Ray Kroc was the man that took some simple ideas, created systems and duplicated them over and over. If you want to read a very interesting book about business, this is it!
Rating: 5
Summary: Behind Play Land and Ronald McDonald
Comment: The story behind the ubiquitous golden arches, and the man who expanded them coast to coast, (and today they reach the edges of the Earth). This book provides a reader friendly, detailed synopsis of McDonald's through decades of the original brothers, to Ray Kroc's entry and exit of what would become one of the most recognized oranizations of the world. (Whether this fact has positive or negative implications is another matter entirely). This is a good book about Mickey-D's and sheds light on many other aspects of American history, diet, culture, business and advertising.
Two brothers named McDonald went west to California from the north-east. They came with about about $8 dollars in their pockets (according to them) and got jobs moving props on movie sets in Hollywood (sound familiar?) After some initial business ventures the brothers opened their own small restaurant in San Bernadino.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest Ray Kroc left school at 16, and like almost all other achievers that reached his level of success, he had a strong work ethic and a hard-driving tenacity to succeed. Expecially at concepts that intially proved successful (hence SOP procedures). How ya build opon something that has a good and successful foundation. A gifted, successful salesman from an early age, he got a job selling paper cups and sold them for 17 years as one of the top salesman of his company. Some of his clients for example, were Wrigley field's vendors, among other Chicago establishments. In his late thirties, he started selling shake mixers. McDonald's comes into the picture when Kroc noticed that two brothers who owned a drive-in hamburger restaurant in Southern California, kept ordering lots of shake mixing machines, when Kroc's mixer business was dying out everywhere else in the country. He met the McDonald brothers and was greatly impressed by their practices. Ray implored them to expand and they replied "who'd want to do it, we don't," and Kroc became the seller of their franchises in the Midwest. He was very successful at establishing McD's in that part of the country (hint).
For his work he didn't earn a lot because of the deal he made with the brothers (an inkling of what was to come). So he added a creative and logical way to profit from his diligent work in spreading the franchises. He formed a separate corporation, and when setting up franchises he'd purchase the property where a new McDonald's was to be built, from his own original corporation he created. (Read Robert Kiyosaki's "Loophoes of the Rich" for details). So, with his corporations being the owner of the property, Kroc would either collect the rent, or a percentage of the restaurant's profits, whichever was greater, by contract structure. This allowed him to be compensated more fully in addition to his original deal with the McDonald brothers, which wasn't the most favorable.
Kroc was selling the franchises and focusing on keeping the model and SOPs identical for every franchise. Perhaps an analogy to the assembly line of the Ford. Kroc had a methodology. If a winning method was not altered or diluted by individualistic owner operators or franchise restaurants here and there across the country, the sales, expansion, and growth would continue. McDonald's had tapped into what a large part of the American public wanted in post WWII America. Ray later bought McDonald's from the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million cash. When he discovered after the deal was finished that the original McD restaurant in San Bernadino was not included, and was to be kept by the brothers, Kroc had forced them to change their restaurant's name on legal grounds, and then and built a franchise across the street to put them out of business. The brothers asked for this, and likely didn't understand 3 major things: 1. ethical business practices 2. the law 3. common sense.
Advertising: to help solidify more growth and consumer loyalty, Kroc knew the value of kids. He hired top advertising people: enter Ronald McDonald. After some marketing tests in some particular regions, came the major nationwide promotion to get the kiddies pleading with their parents that they wanted to go to Mickey-Ds. Have you heard kids clamour their parents to do this? I have. And today, McDonald's has continued the kid-concept by investing large amounts into the Playgrounds added onto many of its' stores.
McDonald's represents many things about American culture. To Americans, and today throughout the world. No matter what you think of Mickey D's it's quite an interesting story of how it started, evolved and came to it's ubiquity today. It's a fact that those golden arches are more recognized than the Christian cross. Again, whether we think that's good or not leads to several other issues involving, chemicals and food science, general health, obesity, globalization, homogenization, marketing to children, and corporatization.
For additional insights into the McDonald's phenomenon read, Jennifer Talwar's "Fast Food, Fast Track" and Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal," and Fumento's "Fatland."
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Title: Grinding It Out : The Making Of Mcdonald's by Ray Kroc ISBN: 0312929870 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz ISBN: 0786883561 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 13 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Sam Walton : Made In America by John Huey, Sam Walton ISBN: 0553562835 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Forbes® Greatest Business Stories of All Time by Forbes Magazine Staff, Daniel Gross ISBN: 0471196533 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 07 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It by Mark Pendergrast ISBN: 0465054684 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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