As explained on McDonald’s website “Dick and Mac McDonald moved to California to seek opportunities they felt unavailable in New England.” In 1948 they launched Speedee Service System featuring 15 cent hamburgers. As the restaurants gained traction that led the brothers to begin franchising their concept until they reached nine operating restaurants. The Speedee System was the foundation of the success of the first McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California.
Quick History
A native Chicagoan, Ray Kroc, in 1939 was the exclusive distributor of a milkshake mixing machine, called Multimixer. In short, he was a salesman.
He visited the McDonald brothers in 1954 and was impressed to their business model which led to him becoming their franchise agent. He opened up the first restaurant for McDonald’s System, Inc., until in 1961 he acquired McDonald’s rights to the brother’s company for $2.7 million.
The McDonald brothers speedee system enabled the first store to operate at very high speed and efficiency, and yet still serve a great burger. In fact, while the initial take from the McDonald brothers was that you could make great burgers in little time, and make them very inexpensive, those could still be done with great ingredients and maintain a high quality.
In fact, McDonald’s would be able to serve them at low price thanks to the fact it bore less operational costs, since there were no servers, it was mostly a self-service experience and the menu was very limited.
While the concept of Fast Food developed already in the early 1900s, that really took off later on, as the McDonald brothers opened their first restaurant.
However, as Ray Kroc took over McDonald’s the concept also changed in meaning. Indeed, as the restaurants scaled their operations the focus was more and more on speed, thus bringing to the quality of food down, and associating fast food with a lesser food experience.
The major institutional shareholders comprise The Vanguard Group (8.98%), BlackRock (7.1%), and State Street Corporation (5.2%). Major individual shareholders comprise Kevin Ozan (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer), Stephen Easterbrook (President and CEO), and other John Rogers, Jr. investor, philanthropist, Ariel Capital Management founder. And a few other individual shareholders.
Starbucks is a multinational coffee chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker in 1971. From a single and very humble bean roasting store in Pike Place Market, the company is now a global giant operating almost 33,000 stores around the world. This large global footprint obviously increases the competition for Starbucks in many different markets. The coffee industry itself is also highly competitive, with established players including McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about three million business students, executives, and aspiring entrepreneurs in 2021 alone | He is also Head of Enterprise Sales for a high-tech startup, which he helped grow at a double-digit rate since the onset | In 2012 Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
