McDonald's founder Ray Kroc started out as a milkshake mixer salesman.
It didn't start well
He traveled from one drive-thru to the next, trying to sell his blenders to the drive-thru owners:
"You expand the supply, the demand goes up, the demand goes up, and you can continue to expand the supply, and it's a matter of the chicken or the egg, and I'm sure that a smart guy like you understands that! "
But the owner of the automobile restaurant did not eat this set, in addition to impatience is bored.
At the time, the drive-thru sold some fried chicken, burgers, milkshakes, and other fast food, but the delivery time was strangely slow, and despite the fact that the waitresses wore pulleys and every chef was busy, there were still cases of serving the wrong food, overtime waiting, and so on.
Each motel is much the same, surrounded by idle young people (delinquents), waiting for their food orders,
Ran around a number of drive-thrus, and none of the owners wanted to pay for his blender.
And the situation is pretty much the same from one drive-thru to the next, with busy waiters and obnoxious wait times.
For a drive-thru like this, adding a blender is almost impossible.
It's a good thing Ray is an inspirational boy, and doesn't forget to give himself chicken soup before he falls asleep at night in his hotel, listening to a Carnegie-like chicken speech:
"Persistence, nothing in the world can replace persistence;
Talent won't do, there's nothing more usual than a gifted person who fails;
Genius won't work, genius who can't achieve his goals has been a cliché for a long time;
education won't work, the world is full of highly educated fools;
persistence and determination are all the strength in the world, show that you won't be defeated by anything;
you can have inner peace, physical health, and inexhaustible strength;
if you try these things every day. and work hard to reach those goals; the results will impress you;
While it sounds like a magical concept, you need to create your own future;
The most important discovery of our generation is that the mindset can change a person's life;
Emerson said that a man will become the person he wants to be every day."
A Ray who receives this kind of brainwashing every day must be someone who is ambitious and willing to persevere.
The next day, he continued to visit his clients with enthusiasm, and of course, he continued to be rejected by them again and again.
A little turnaround
Well, after all the buildup at the beginning, the first little climax is coming.
He calls his company's female operator to find out if there's some good news.
There are a lot of phone messages, most of which are bill collectors and returns for refunds.
Finally, surprisingly, there was an order for 6 milkshake blenders for a motel on Route 66.
6 units?are you kidding me?
Ray must have been like this inside at the time.
Of course he thought on second thought, they must have ordered the wrong ones.
To confirm the information, Ray immediately called the other party, wanting to find out if they had placed this order.
On the phone you could hear that the other person was busy, and of course every motel is busy green.
When asked if they had ordered a milkshake blender, the person was concerned about when the 6 units would arrive?
Then they said they should order 8 units!
At this point Ray is even more amazed, this drive-in must be very unusual and he decides to visit in person.
Surprising fast food restaurant
To the scene, Ray found that this store and other auto restaurants are really very different, other auto restaurants are waiting in front of the door of the youth in two or three, while this restaurant is a long line in front of the door, which has a young man, a child, and a mother.
The waiter told him he needed to get out of the car and stand in line to order himself.
After he joins the long line, the lady in front of him kindly tells him: don't worry, the line is fast.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before it was Ray's turn to order, and Ray ordered his favorite burger and Coke.
Thirty seconds later, the waiter puts his food in a paper bag in front of him and tells him his meal is ready.
?
Unsure, Ray checked the order with the waiter again and realized that it was indeed correct and that he had ordered the meal.
"But where do I eat?"
The waiter smiles and says, "In the car, in the park, wherever you want to eat"
amzing~
Ray takes his food and sits down on a bench in front of this drive-in restaurant and eats as he surveys the restaurant.
There were mothers with children, young couples, and everyone was casually sitting on a nearby bench eating burgers and drinking coke.
It was simply wonderful ~
Discover the secret
After Ray identified himself, Dick and Mike, the owners of the restaurant, took Ray on a tour of the restaurant's operation, which was a perfect food-processing assembly line, fast and standardized.
Immediately Ray said he wanted to have dinner with the two owners*** and learn their story.
At dinner, Dick and Mike tell the story of their restaurant's journey, and trade secrets.
1. Reduce the variety of goods. In the course of opening their restaurant, they found that 75% of their revenue came from the 3 most popular food items: burgers, fries, and milkshakes. The rest of the food increased meal times, but contributed little to revenue. And streamlining to 3 item categories can also reduce the cost of items if the volume is high enough.
2. Improve the speed of serving food, reducing the average serving time from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. How is that done? First of all the premise of this is to reduce the variety of goods, when it is determined that their restaurant only serves burgers, fries, milkshakes three kinds of food, it can be targeted to optimize the food processing line. This is a very colorful part of the movie, the brothers are very bold to suspend the restaurant for half a month, and then in a tennis court, simulation of their restaurant - McDonald's food processing model, they continue to optimize the location of each operating table, optimize the operator's process, until the whole process is as smooth and fast as a musical performance.
3. Standardize the finished product standards for each food item, such as two slices of pickle for each burger, how many minutes of doneness for the fried beef, and how deep to fry the fries.
Here, the movie tells the secret of the success of McDonald's, business secrets of the "more fast, good, save", McDonald's accounted for three: fast, good, save! Hundreds of times faster, to surprise users. And the flavor is good, lower price, we can hardly imagine which will refuse.
So the next part of the movie is about how McDonald's went from being a drive-through restaurant to a global restaurant empire.
Decisive entry
? The story of the two McDonald brothers thrilled Ray Kroc. He immediately made a bold decision: franchising. Although the McDonald brothers did not recognize it, because they also made an attempt to open a few outlets, but the results were not good, quality control is very difficult.
? But Ray Crocker is not discouraged, he is an ambitious person, he and McDonald's brothers signed a thick contract, all the contracts have McDonald's brothers to draw up, Ray Crocker all unconditional acceptance, he only needs franchises, he wants to replicate such a store all over the United States.
Then Ray Kroc returned home and, without his wife's knowledge, mortgaged his house to open the first McDonald's branch, named McDonald's No. 1.
He was obsessed with the operation of the new store and was constantly selling the new store model and looking for all kinds of talents to manage the store. Soon, in the first month, he opened three new stores, an achievement that also surprised the McDonald brothers, but they just thought it was Ray's momentary passion.
? Ray's progress was so smooth that he introduced husband and wife employees as store managers and servers for each location, with the store manager overseeing each chef operator and ensuring the quality of the food. That sample control problem was solved. And the wife is responsible for external consumer hospitality services as well as McDonald's storefront public **** area of the hygiene situation.
Such a stable husband and wife employees, that set up the image of McDonald's service to the family, but also solved the McDonald's outlets before the quality control problems, health and image problems, husband and wife employee model at the same time is more stable.
? Soon opened dozens of McDonald's outlets in the West, and began to do the initiative to join, this time the situation has changed, from Ray's initiative to promote and other people actively looking for Ray asked to join.
Crisis is also a business opportunity
However, Ray's accounting problems, the new store revenue is a lot, but the operating costs are also very high, and Ray and McDonald's Brothers signed a contract, 50 percent of the profits are owned by the McDonald's Brothers.
So the profits alone are completely insufficient for the constant expansion of the new stores.
Ray calls McDonald Bros. and asks for a lower cut, which McDonald Bros. refuses.
The bank's mortgage was not returned for three consecutive months, and the bank chased him to his home, where his wife was furious that, for two people who ****ed up their possessions, Ray had quietly taken out a mortgage himself.
Ray went to the bank to find the salesman to spit out his dissatisfaction:
Ray: I said I want you to call me the company!
? Salesman: I called, but no one answered, and you have not paid the loan for three months.
? Ray: My company is doing well, I have 9 locations now and will continue to add 5 more soon.
? Salesman: You haven't paid back your loan for three months.
? Ray left in a huff. As the saying goes, it's all in the mind of the beholder. A nearby bank clerk, Harry Thornburn, reaches out to Ray and says he can help him with his debt.
? Harry Thornburn put forward the McDonald's corporate structure into a real estate company idea, McDonald's hold land ownership, the land leased to people who want to join McDonald's, and then so there is more cash flow, and at the same time, if the franchise McDonald's store quality control is not up to standard, you can also take the initiative to terminate the contract, which gives more control over the franchisee.
Harry Thorne later became a financial advisor to McDonald's.
And so, McDonald's went from strength to strength.
? And the McDonald brothers gradually felt that they were no longer able to control Ray Kroc. Then Ray Kroc bought out the entire McDonald's Corporation from the McDonald Brothers for $2.7 million, and the McDonald Brothers' store - the first McDonald's restaurant - was surprisingly not allowed to be called McDonald's anymore.
Movie Review
The whole movie does not blow on Ray Crocker, and very objectively describes the whole story of Ray Crocker's discovery of McDonald's, the continuous expansion of McDonald's, and even the final monopoly of McDonald's.
The other main line of the story is Ray Kroc's family. At the very beginning, Ray Kroc was supposed to be an unreliable salesman, selling paper cups, kitchen recliners, milkshake mixers, and other unknown things, which were not very successful in any case. But his wife has always been quietly supportive of him, and although she complains a lot, she's kind of doing her job.
For example, at a club dinner, all the other couples, especially the husbands, made jokes about Ray Kroc, but his wife stood up for him, which is why he opened three McDonald's stores in the first month, and the other two were marketed successfully at this dinner.
? As McDonald's rapidly expands, Ray begins to realize that he has turned the form around, unbeknownst to his wife at this point, who is still trying to help him with the sales pitch.
? And at this point, it becomes clear that Ray has a crush on Joan Smith, the wife of one of the partners, at a get-together with the partners. They play the piano together and sing "Windfall," and here it is also alluded to that they later come together.
? And in the later years, as McDonald's continued to grow, Ray and Joan Smith became close personal friends, chatting on the phone late at night, like every cheating husband.
? While buying out the McDonald's company, Ray simultaneously filed for divorce and gave his ex-wife the house and car, which of course are now nothing in Ray's eyes.
? But the company's shares he did not have a penny of his ex-wife. As he says in the movie:
"Splitting the McDonald's shares with her wouldn't ~kill me I wouldn't!"
? Of course, there's no doubt that later on, he and Joan Smith got married, and, probably to the chagrin of many Dodgers, the two are still happily married into old age yet.
? Joan Smith, of course, was in the same category as Ray Kroc, and she was business savvy enough to come up with the idea of using milkshake powder instead of milkshakes, saving on the cost of refrigerated milkshakes, which was certainly an innovation for the McDonald's business empire.
At the same time, replacing milkshakes with milkshake powder was not recognized by the McDonald brothers, and their philosophy of pursuing quality was the exact opposite. In fact, the difference between the McDonald brothers and Ray is alluded to here.
When Ray argued with the McDonald brothers over the matter, he said:
"You can make no money on your own, please don't stop us from making money! "
? At the end of a dispute with the McDonald brothers over buyouts, Ray put it harshly:
? "I can put a hose in a competitor's mouth after they fall in the water, can you do that?"
? The McDonald brothers looked at each other and silently replied, "Yes, we can't do that!"
? Throughout the film, the McDonald's Brothers are the smart and kind ones who created the McDonald's fast food production line, which revolutionized fast food, and who are committed to quality and willing to sacrifice expansion for quality.
And the fact that they didn't become the founders of McDonald's may have something to do with the chicken soup that the movie keeps saying, "You become who you want to be every day!"
Because the McDonald brothers and sisters never had this part of the McDonald's empire in their vision.
And while Ray Kroc is full of controversy, he's not a morally good person, abandons his bad wife, squeezes out his partners, and can give up quality to make money, replacing milkshakes with powdered milkshakes, there's no denying that Ray is definitely a man of ambition, and he decided to get in on the action as soon as he met McDonald's, and decisively mortgaged his house, and he had within him a vision of planting the Golden Arches Seed all over the United States of America vision, he is everywhere to find talent, just for the cause of McDonald's.
The whole movie, as Chicken Soup said: how big is the dream, how big is the stage!
? You become who you want to be every day!