Independent Project.

For my independent project I would be talking about the development of the great McDonald’s restaurants, and how it became what it has come to be today. Each week for the rest of the semester I will be giving you something new that McDonald’s developed through the course of the years.

           

For this first post, I will begin with the names of the founders of this “great success”.  Maurice “Mac” and Richard “Dick” McDonald, also known as the McDonald brothers, soon after finishing high school left their home town New Hampshire and headed off to California. There they started of their first business, a small movie theater. This project did not go well and four years later, 1940 they opened up a McDonald’s Bar-B- Que restaurant on Fourteenth and E streets in San Bernardino, California. Within 5 years they were one of the richest families in the area. Between the two the two they were making more than $100,000 every year. In 1954 the McDonald brothers turned over the franchising rights of McDonald’s to Ray Kroc, paying .5% of the gross income McDonald’s was completely paid off by Ray Kroc by 1961. The McDonald brother soon sold their properties in California and moved back to New Hampshire.

1955 Ray Kroc opened his very first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois. Ray Kroc believed that advertising was something that would pay off in the long run and by 1962 McDonald’s introduced their now world known Golden Arches logo.

This year in Denver, Colorado becomes the home of the first McDonald’s with inside seating.  A year later with the company’s billionth hamburger sold, the red haired clown known as Ronald McDonald’s was introduce. By 1964 the great Filet-o-Fish sandwich was introduced and by 1965 McDonald’s corporation went public. 

Come read more facts about the McDonald’s development next week and see what else you didn’t know about this well known company.

Problem posing

1.      Problem:  The fast food industries desire to make more faster and cheaper, has caused commercial kitchens to turn into small factories, and have change familiar foods into manufactured commodities.

2.      Give a quotation – “just add hot water”.  The reason why I picked that quote is because, I feel like it describes the problem in four simple terms.  It shows how what we as consumers now days consider anything a great meal.  The quote also gives us a general idea on how everything is made at a fast food restaurant.  And how easy it has become to train employees to make food that looks and tastes the same.

3.      When reading this I remembered the time when I was working at Chuck E. Chesses.  Back then I didn’t see the kitchen s a small factory like the book describes the fast food industries kitchen, I simply saw it as a routine job I had at the time.  Now that I think about it I see why all the instructions on how to make something as simple as a cheese pizza.  Everything had to be measured, it couldn’t be less or any extra, everything had to look and taste the same.  Even when preparing the salad, the lettuce had to be cut a certain size and set on the salad bar as the head director instructed.  It wasn’t just a salad bar, it was the “Chuck E. salad bar” that meant nothing to me but for them was a very big deal.

4.      The food industry does not see this as a problem.  In contrary they find this to be very easy and less time consuming way to meet the customer demands.  The book does not explain ways that this has tried to change.

5.      Although kitchen’s turning into small factories has been beneficial for the industry, I highly believe this has to change.  A frozen everything and just add hot water meal is in no way healthy.  I think it would be of a good idea instead of all the food being frozen for god knows how long; there should be a law that requires all food to be prepared on site.  No food should be precooked and frozen to make the process faster.  If the amount of food being cook is not enough, more workers should be hired.