Billions and billions served. Or is it in the trillions by now?
And it all had to start somewhere. It had to be founded. And that means someone had to be the founder.
An all-American founder: Ray Kroc.
Only it turns out that before he owned McDonalds he got the idea from Mac and Dick McDonald. And then he had to “maneuver himself into a position” to pull the company out from under the brothers and go on to create his billion-dollar empire.
Ray sold milk-shake machines. One day he gets an order from the McDonald brothers for 8 of them. That prompts him to travel to California to check them out. And then the rest is history.
Mac and Dick. And [later] Harry.
McDonalds. Loved by some, hated by others. It has for all practical purposes become a legendary fixture in the narratives of those who look around them and see one big gigantic “McWorld”.
That’s how it works. Some think of McDonald’s as everything that is encompassed in the American dream. The very embodiment of it. While others think of it as everything that is encompassed instead in the crass, mass-market, mindless consumption mentality that America has basically succeeded in transporting around the globe.
This one takes us all the way back to the days when a hamburger, french fries and a coke would cost you 35 cents.
Good news: Ronald McDonald is no where to be found.
IMDb
[b]The original McDonalds, as depicted in the film, is actually located at 1398 North E St., San Bernardino, CA 92405. The owner of Juan Pollo Chicken purchased the site and has restored it to a McDonalds museum. The oldest remaining Golden Arches-styled McDonalds (1953) is still in operation at 10207 Lakewood Blvd., Downey, California 90241.
The company Kroc worked for prior to founding McDonalds, Prince Castle, still exists and supplies McDonalds with much of its equipment
The McDonald’s restaurants depicted were built from scratch in parking lots, as the crew was unable to locate suitable existing restaurants in locations which matched the desired look of the film.
To play his character Michael Keaton watched Glengarry Glen Ross , Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street and Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. [/b]
trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt4276820/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder
trailer: youtu.be/AX2uz2XYkbo
THE FOUNDER [2016]
Directed by John Lee Hancock
[b]Ray: I know what you’re thinkin’…What the heck do I need a 5-spindle for… when I barely sell enough milkshakes to justify my single-spindle. Right? Wrong. Are you familiar with the notion of the chicken or the egg Mr. Griffith, I mentioned that there’d be costs. Well, I think it applies here. Do you not need the multimixer because, well heck, you’re not selling enough milkshakes. Or are you not selling enough milkshakes because you don’t have a multimixer? I firmly believe it’s the latter. Because your customer comes in here and he knows if he orders a shake from your establishment… that well, he’s in for a terrific wait. He’s done it before and he thinks to himself, well by golly, I’m not gonna make that mistake again. But if ya had the Prince Castle, 5-spindle, multimixer… with patented direct-drive electric motor we’d greatly increase your ability to produce… delicious, frosty milkshakes, FAST. Mark my words. Dollars to donuts, you’ll be sellin’ more of those sons of bitches… then you can shake a stick at. You increase the supply, and the demand will follow… Increase supply, demand follows. Chicken, egg. Do you follow my logic?I know you do because you’re a bright, forward thinking guy who… knows a good idea when he hears one. So… What do you say?
Restaurant owner: Nah. But thanks anyway.
…
Ray puts on a self-help record: “Persistence. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent won’t. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius won’t. Unrewarded genius is practically a clich. Education won’t. The world is full of educated fools. Persistence and determination alone are all powerful.”[/b]
Then he gets that fateful order from McDonalds.
[b]Employee: Hi, welcome to McDonalds. May I take your order?
Ray: Yeah, I’ll have a hamburger, french fries, and a Coca-Cola.
Employee: That’ll be 35 cents please.
Ray: All right.
[Gives him 50 cents]
Employee: Fifteen cents is your change.
[Gives it to him, then turns around and grabs a bag and a drink with a straw in it, and sets it in front of him]
Employee: Here you are.
Ray: What’s this?
Employee: Your food.
Ray: No, no, no, I just ordered.
Employee: And now it’s here.
Ray [seems hesitant]: You sure?
[the employee nods]
Ray: Where’s the umm… the silverware and plates and everything?
Employee: You just eat it straight out of the wrapper, and then you throw it all out.
Ray: Really? Okay.
[Grabs the order, turns to go, but turns back again]
Ray: Where do I eat it?
Employee: Your car, at the park, at home. Wherever you like.
…
Mac [giving Ray a tour of the business]: The first stop for every McDonald’s hamburger is the grill… manned by 2 cooks whose soul job it is to grill those all beef beauties to perfection. Meanwhile, as the patty cooks our dressers get the buns ready. Every McDonald’s burger has 2 pickles a pinch of onions and a precise shot of ketchup and mustard.
Ray: Now where’d ya get those gadgets?
Mac: We made 'em.
Ray: Made them?!
Mac: Yeah, custom built. Whole kitchen is.
…
Dick: The fries…
Mac: What about 'em?
Dick: They’re 5% too crisp.
Mac: No, they’re perfect.
Dick: I think we should drop to 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
Mac: Wasn’t that what we were at before?
Dick: 400, not 375. Higher temp, shorter cook.
…
Ray: I’m gonna take you out to dinner. You and your brother.
Dick: What for?
Ray: This is the most remarkable food restaurant I’ve ever seen in all my years in this industry… and I’ve seen it all. I wanna hear your story.
…
Mac: The drive-in model as we’ve learned has a few built in problems.
Ray: Tell me about it.
Mac: For starters, there’s the customer issue. Drive-in’s tend to attract, shall we say, a less than desirable clientele. Teenagers. Hot-rodders and hooligans and juvenile deliquents in blue jeans. And then there’s the service. It takes forever and a day for your food to arrive, and when it finally does…
Ray: It’s usually wrong.
Dick: Yeah. The car hops are too busy dodging gropes to remember that you wanted strawberry phosphate, not cherry.
Mac: And then there’s the expenses. The huge payroll due to the large staff required dishes constantly getting broken or stolen. Tremendous overhead. So one day Dick has a realization. He sees that the bulk of our sales are in only 3 items. Hamburgers, french fries, soft-drinks.
Dick: 87%.
Mac: So we say to ourselves let’s focus on what sells and that’s exactly what we do…Brisket gone, tamales gone, but we don’t stop there. We look at everything. What else don’t we need? Turns out quite a lot. Car hops. Walk up to a window, get your food yourself. Dishes. All paper packaging, disposable. Cigarette machines, jukeboxes, drive out the riff raff. Creating a family friendly environment here…We wanted something that wasn’t just different. It had to be better. It needed to be ours. And that’s what brings us to the biggest cut of all.
Ray: Which was?
Mac: The wait.
Ray: Orders ready in 30 seconds, not 30 minutes[/b]
You won’t believe what comes next. On the tennis court.
[b]Mac: We take the layout to a builder, custom build the kitchen to our exact specs. Ta dah! The speedy system is born. The world’s first ever system to deliver food fast. It is totally revolutionary…
Dick: …and a complete disaster.
Ray: Why?
Mac: Opening day, cars pull up onto the lot and they start honking immediately because no car-hop comes up…We try to explain to them the walk up window and they are uh… bewildered? No, furious.
Customer: “What do you mean I gotta get out of my car?”
Mac: Most of 'em just cuss us out and drive off…and the few that stay are mad as heck because they are eating off paper and they’ve gotta discard their own trash…We may have underestimated the learning curve. So by 5 o’clock, Dick is calculating how much it’s gonna cost to go back to drive-in…
…
Ray [the next morning]: Franchise!
Mac: Beg pardon?
Ray: Franchise. Franchise the damn thing. It’s too damn good for just one location. There should be McDonald’s everywhere. Coast to coast, sea to shining sea.
Dick: Mr. Kroc…
Ray: Hey, I got a confession I wanna make to you boys… I’m not out here in California for any kind of business meetings. I came out here for you. Franchise. Franchise, franchise, franchise. Franchise.
Dick: We already tried. Three in Southern California, one in Sacramento and one in Phoenix. And that’s all there will ever be.
Ray: Why?
Dick: Two words: Quality Control. It’s almost impossible to enforce standards from afar. Places were a mess. Filthy kitchens, inconsistent menus…Sacramento was selling burritos.
…
Ray [looking at a framed illustration on the wall]: Wuh…what is that?
Mac: A concept.
Ray: Huh. What are those?
Mac: Oh, it’s a way to make the place stand out when you’re driving by. The “golden arches”, I call 'em.
Ray: The golden arches… Who thought of that?
Mac: Oh that’s some pure Dick magic right there.
…
Mac: Hey Dick…What is it with this guy?
Ray: Do it for your country.
Mac: What?
Ray: If you boys don’t want to franchise for yourselves, that’s fine…Do it for your country. Do it for America.
…
Ray [to Dick and Mac]: Ya know what, I drove through a lot of towns. A lot of small towns. And they all had two things in common…They had a courthouse and they had a church. On top of the church, got a cross and on top of the courthouse they have a flag. Flags, crosses, crosses flags. Driving around I just cannot stop thinking about this tremendous restaurant. Now at the risk of sounding blasphemous forgive me. Those arches have a lot in common with those buildings. A building with a cross on top, what is that? It’s a gathering place where decent wholesome people come together and they share values protected by that American flag. It could be said that that beautiful building flanked by those arches signifies more or less the same thing. It doesn’t just say, “Delicious hamburgers inside”. They signify family. It signifies community. It’s a place where Americans come together to break bread. I am telling you…McDonald’s can be… the new American church. Feeding bodies and feeding souls and it ain’t just open on Sundays, boys.
…
Dick [on the phone about Coke sponsership]: We’re just not comfortable with the notion of turning our menu into an advertisement.
Ray: See, it’s not an ad, it’s sponsorship.
Dick: It’s distasteful.
Ray: It’s free money! Loads of restaurants do this.
Dick: Well we don’t.
Ray: Why not?
Dick: Because I have no interest in indulging in that sort of crass commercialism. It’s not McDonald’s.
Ray: I didn’t realize I was parterning with a beatnik.
Dick: I’ll have you know I’m a card carrying Republican!
…
Ray: What’s your name?
Leonard: Leonard. Leonard Rosenblatt.
Ray: Rosenblatt? What’s a Jew doing selling Catholic bibles?
Leonard: Making a living.
…
Ray [recruiting folks to run the restaurants]: I’m looking for a few good men…and women. Who aren’t afraid of hard work. Aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves. I’m looking for scrappers, hustlers, guys that are willing to roll up their sleeves. They’re livin’ on drive, they got a little fire in their belly. I stand right here before you today, I’m gonna offer you something as precious as gold. And you know what that is? Anybody? Anybody? Opportunity. It’s opportunity. Opportunity. Opportunity to advance, to move forward, to move up, to advance… To succeed. To win. To step up. The sky’s the limit. The sky is the limit. Grab the brass ring. To give yourself a shot at the American dream. Put your arms around the American dream. Opportunity. Cause I’ll tell ya somethin… At McDonald’s? It’s like this great nation of ours… Some of that elbow grease. I guarantee ya, if you got the guts… the gumption, the desire… I guarantee ya you can succeed. There’s gold to be had. At the end of… those Golden Arches… Golden Arches. Golden Arches. Now who’s with me? Who wants to jump on that ladder to success? Be part of the McDonald’s “mishpokhe”. Now who’s with me? Come on, lemme see some hands.
…
Ray: Everything’s changed. Ya want a drink?
Ethel: No, changed how?
Ray: Forget the Chicago suburbs, think bigger.
Ethel: Bigger…
Ray: I’m not chasing them anymore. They’re chasing me now.
Ethel: The trip. How was it?
Ray: Triumphant. They were rolling out the red carpet. And kissing this ring. They’re begging me for McDonald’s now.
…
Dick [on the phone]: Ray, we have no interest in a milkshake that contains no milk.
…
Harry [to Ray]: Mr. Kroc, if you’re not making money hand over fist, something’s terribly wrong.
…
Harry: You don’t seem to realize what business you’re in. You’re not in the burger business, you’re in the real estate business. You don’t build an empire off a 1.4% cut of a $0.15 hamburger. You build it by owning the land upon which that burger is cooked. What you ought to be doing is buying up plots of land…then turning around and leasing said plots to franchisees. Who as a condition of their deal should be permitted to lease from you, and you alone. This will provide you with two things. 1. A steady up front revenue stream…money flows in before the first stake is in the ground. 2. Greater capital for expansion. Which in turn fuels further land aquisition…which in turn fuels further expansion…and so on, and so on. Land. That’s where the money is. And more than that, control. Control over the franchisee. Fail to uphold quality standards, you cancel their lease. Control over Dick and Mac. End result, you’ll have the banks and the franchisees in the palm of your hand.
…
Ray [on the phone]: Look, if you don’t wanna make a profit, that’s fine.But don’t stop the rest of us.
Dick: Us?
Ray: Us, as in everyone but you.
Dick: Who did you send them to?
Ray: Everyone but you.
Dick: You have no right. You are to stop this instant, is that clear?
Ray: Nah…
Dick: What the hell does that mean, nah? You will abide by the terms of your deal.
Ray: I am through taking marching orders from you… You and your endless parade of NOs. Constantly cowering in the face of progress.
Dick: If phony powdered milkshakes is your idea of progress you have a profound misunderstand of what McDonald’s is about.
Ray: I have a far greater understanding of McDonald’s than you two yokels.
Dick: What? You will do as we say.
Ray: Nope.
Dick: You have a contract!
Ray: You know, contracts are like hearts… they’re made to be broken.
…
Ray Kroc [on the phone]: While you two boys were content to sit back and become a couple of also-rans…I wanna take the future. I wanna win. And you don’t get there by being some “aw shucks” guy sap. There’s no place in business for people like that. Business is war. It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat. If my competitor were drowning, I’d walk over and put a hose right in his mouth. Can you say the same?
Mac: I can’t. Nor would I want to.
Ray: Hence, your single location.
Mac: We want you out of this company, Ray.
Ray: Mac, how do you propose we do that?
Mac: We will sue you, whatever it takes.
Ray: And you’d probably win. But you can’t afford to sue me. I’d bury you in court costs alone. Mac, I’m the president and C.E.O. of a major corporation with land holdings in 17 states…You run a burger stand in the desert. I’m national. You’re fucking local.
[Mac collapses to the floor]
…
Mac [to Dick]: We will never beat him. We will never be rid of him.
…
Ray [on the phone]: Let me explain something to you Dick…You boys have full say over what goes on inside the restaurants. But outside, above, below… your authority stops at the door. And at the floor. Alright?
Mac: What is he saying?
Dick: He’s buying the land.
Mac: Our land?
…
Dick: I just have to ask you one thing. Something I’ve never understood.
Ray: Alright.
Dick: That day we met, when we gave you the tour…
Ray: Uh huh. What about it?
Dick: We showed you everything. The whole system, all of our secrets. We were an open book. So why didn’t you just…
Ray: Steal it? Just, grab your ideas and run off, start my own business…using all those ideas of yours. It would have failed.
Dick: How do you know?
Ray: Am I the only one who got the kitchen tour? You must have invited lots of people back there, huh?
Dick: And?
Ray: How many of them succeeded?
Dick: Lots of people started restaurants.
Ray Kroc: As big as McDonald’s?
Dick: Of course not.
Ray: No one ever has and no one ever will because they all lacked that one thing that makes McDonald’s special.
Dick: Which is?
Ray: Even you don’t know what it is.
Dick: Enlighten me.
Ray: It’s not just the system, Dick. It’s the name. That glorious name, McDonald’s. It could be, anything you want it to be…it’s limitless, it’s wide open…it sounds, uh…it sounds like it sounds like America. That’s compared to Kroc. What a crock. What a load of crock. Would you eat at a place named Kroc’s? Kroc’s has that blunt, Slavic sound. Kroc’s. But McDonald’s, oh boy. That’s a beauty. A guy named McDonald? He’s never gonna get pushed around in life.
Dick: That’s clearly not the case.
Ray: So, you don’t have a check for 1.35 million dollars in your pocket? Bye Dick.
Dick: So if you can’t beat’em, buy’em.
Ray: I remember the first time I saw that name stretched across your stand out there. It was love at first sight. I knew right then and there…I had to have it. And now I do.
Dick: You don’t have it.
Ray: You sure about that? Bye Dick. [/b]