Mcdonald's Case Study

On McDonalds For my business course, I have been asked to prepare a report for a business at work. I could choose any business to investigate. I decided to do McDonalds because it is globally recognised and of its size. Also because it is a franchise I thought that it would be interesting to see how a franchise operated.

About everyone at some age, at some point or another, and in some country has gotten a sample of American's symbol for fast food through the golden arches of McDonald's. This report will attempt to analyze the external and internal sectors that affect the company's success. The external analysis will provide opportunities and threats while the internal analysis will show indicators of strength and weakness. It will then follow up with critical issues, strategic alternatives, recommendations and implementation. The case studied is found in Appendix 2 of Mary Coulter's "Strategic Management in Action" book.

First, Schlosser and Wilson describe the history of fast food. Everything started with a fifteen-year-old boy named Charlie Nagreen at a county fair squishing a meatball between two slices of bread, creating the hamburger. The authors then go on to talk about how McDonald’s was the first restaurant to introduce a quick system for customers to get their food. After seeing the success of the McDonald brothers, a businessman named Ray Kroc made a deal with them to travel the country, spreading the chain. Later, Ray Kroc would buy McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers. When other restaurants, such as Wendy’s and Burger King, saw the success of McDonald’s, they began to do the same thing, having a chain of identical restaurants across the United States. Not only did restaurants adopt this idea of complete sameness, but so did other companies such as

McDonald’s has been in business since 1955. Through many years of great strategic and financial planning, it has become one of the most successful food chains in the world. In order to continue its great success, McDonald’s must continue to adapt to change. In this paper we will discuss the strategic and financial planning that would be necessary to keep McDonald’s on top of the food chain.

In the story it said “The key to a successful franchise: “uniformity” p. 5” which proves that most fast food restaurants use uniformity in order to be successful because in the book it also goes on to say ““We have found out…that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists,” declared Ray Kroc, one of the founders of McDonald’s, angered by some of his franchisees.” This supports my quote because with uniformity it means that some things can’t be changed and need to stay consistent. In the book, it says that in order for a business to be successful, the individual must rely on the business, and I believe that this is a uniform for all restaurants, not just mcdonald's. Will find more evidence in the stories

Give two examples of the steps Ray Kroc took to build the franchise business that the McDonald brothers didn’t take.

The Opening Case shows that McDonald’s is one of the few firms able to achieve strategic competitiveness from its founding until the present time.

McDonald’s has combined Taylor’s, Weber’s, and Fayol’s theories picking out some of the components that best fit their mission. These components include Taylor’s supervision practices, emphasis on efficient specific tasks, and employee placement practices, which represent the mechanistic organization theory. Weber’s hierarchical authority structure, merit based promotion principles, and impersonal management practices. In addition to, Fayol’s bureaucratic management style that stresses planning, organizing and coordinating. Common principles among these three theories like the shared belief in the division of labor, order, and extensive policies are part of McDonald’s management style. In essence, McDonald’s has gathered the components it believed would allow them to accomplish

McDonald’s development from its first drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California, to the famous fast

McDonald’s is the biggest fast-food chain in the world. The McDonald’s brand is worth about 95 billion dollars U.S., which leads the next place restaurant, Starbucks, by 78 billion dollars U.S. (Statista) McDonald’s makes the most money in fast food on the planet. 27.57 billion dollars U.S. was made in revenue in 2012(Statista). Currently, McDonald’s has over 35,000 restaurants operating all over the world in over 100 countries, which adds up to serving around 100 million people per day(Statista). All of this wasn’t possible if it wasn’t for Ray Kroc. In 1954, Ray Kroc had used all of his life savings in a becoming the exclusive distributor for a company that distributed milk shake makers called Multimixer. Kroc had heard word that there was a hamburger stand in California called McDonald’s, running 8 Multimixers at a time and he wanted to know why they needed so many for one hamburger stand, so he went to California to visit the stand. Having a menu with not many items to choose from, Kroc was surprised at how many people were coming to buy McDonald’s food. Kroc was so intrigued, he asked the owners, Dick and Mac MacDonald, to open more restaurants, which he would do personally. The first McDonald’s restaurant that Kroc opened himself was in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955, which had the first ever Golden Arches (6th most known brand in the world as of 2013)

McDonald’s has extremely strict rules when it comes to awarding franchises. First, it is very costly to open a new location or purchase an existing location, with the median startup cost being $300,000 (Kalnins & Lafontaine, 2004, p. 750). As well, the company does an extensive background check on a variety of issues including credit history, business management experience, and the acceptance of the contractual agreement that the company provides. Because of these strict rules and the large amount of capital needed to purchase a location, “rates for franchise applicants are 1% for McDonald's” (Norton, 1988, p. 204). This is an extremely low acceptance rate and is even lower than McDonald’s chief competitor, Burger King, who accepts 1.5% percent of applicants (Norton, 1988, p. 199). These low numbers are understandable in the context of the business and risk that is involved. Though the franchise purchaser must pay a large amount of money to gain the rights to the restaurant, they truly have nothing to lose besides money because they are simply running another company’s business model as well as using their trademarks and logos. McDonald’s on the other hand, has a great amount at stake because they place the well being of an entire restaurant into the caretaking of an individual who simply purchased the rights for the store. If the store does poorly or if there are issues with customer service, it reflects

Over the last four years, I’ve delt a great deal with RFID supply chains, and have seen first hand the positive advancements that are made with them. If given the opportunity to lead this project with your company, I believe I can close the gap between Intel and it’s competitors.

McDonald has been a well-known and valuable brand for over half a century. The company’s mission and vision is striving to be the world’s best quick service restaurant and formalizing their beliefs into “People, Vision, and People Promise”. “Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value” also became the company’s motto. The company’s first McDonald store was built “in 1940 by the original McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac. Later in 1954, Ray Kroc became the first official franchisee appointed by Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California” (Chandiramani, Ravi). Soon after, Mr. Kroc opened his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, and the McDonald’s corporation was created. The new franchise began to grow rapidly as a result of its

The company researched for the purpose of this paper is McDonald 's. This company 's history dates back since 1940 when Mac and Dick McDonald initially opened McDonald 's BBQ restaurant located in San Bernardino, CA. In 1948 they shut down the restaurant, just to reopen it as a self-service drive-in restaurant. According to About McDonald’s (2012), their menu included only 9 items, such as: milk, coffee, soft drinks, cheeseburger, hamburger, potato chips, and a slice of pie. Potato chips were then replaced by French fries. The history of this company is significantly market by Ray Kroc, who in 1954 at a visit to McDonald 's in San Bernardino decides to have a franchise of McDonald 's. A year later, in 1955, he opens his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The franchising plan allowed growth and by 1965 there were more than 700 restaurants across United States. McDonald 's

• What measures could Burger King do to dethrone McDonald’s as well as hold off the challenge of a number of other chains that were growing in size and competitive power?