13A- Reading Reflection

13A-


13A- Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc



1.      

a.      What surprised you the most? What surprised me the most is that Ray Kroc, the man behind McDonalds, did not create the restaurant. All he did was make a contract with the brothers who invented the masterpiece that gave him the rights to expand it. I had always believed that he was the one that came up with and developed the idea, but this is not the case. This version of entrepreneurship is about using someone else’s ideas and making them profitable. I did not know that this was even considered entrepreneurship.

b.     What about the entrepreneur did you most admire? In this case I admired that the entrepreneur only sold what he felt the customer would need. Before he worked with McDonald’s he sold paper cups and eventually milkshake makers. When he worked as a salesman, he said that he only sold businesses tools that would improve their business and cashflow. This honesty is something that I truly admire from Kroc.

c.      What about the entrepreneur did you least admire? When he started to experience difficulty selling cups, he turned to other sources of income working odd and sometimes illegal jobs. After being a piano player for a bar selling illegal alcohol and then selling bad real estate, Kroc did bounce back and get back on track. Although he did turn his life around, this part of his life where he made poor decisions financially is not something I admire.

d.     Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it? As I mentioned before, Kroc faced mistakes in his personal life but he also had adversity in opening more McDonald’s locations. When he opened the 2^nd ever location, the main struggle was quality control. The main issue was the fries not tasting like that of the original McDonald’s. Kroc struggled with this for a while until he contacted potato experts at the Potato and Onion Association. They were able to break down the production process and find the exact step that was causing the issue. After solving this, Kroc was able to open a McDonald’s anywhere that had the capability of serving the same quality fries as the original location.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? The main competency that I believe Ray Kroc displayed was that he had a big vision for what McDonald’s could be. He didn’t feel like there was a limit to what his brand could be, there was no stopping point for him essentially. He envisioned a McDonald’s on every corner and that vision never died. He also aimed for perfection in all that he did. When the fries weren’t completely correct, he didn’t stop until he found the solution to the problem that made them perfect again.

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you. The part of the reading that was confusing to me was mostly the aspects that talked about franchise owners. The book tells how the franchises are what drove some of the menu developments, such as the Big Mac, Egg McMuffin, etc. Kroc says that these franchise owners are what expanded his brand by developing the menu. I don’t really understand how the brand developed into a franchise, nor how this could make the business itself profitable if the franchise owners are the ones that are making money on that restaurant’s location. Why is franchising even part of entrepreneurship if the business is run by a different owner. I was utterly confused by the franchising version of the business.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why? The first question I would ask would be, Why did you choose to franchise and how did that affect the growth and profit of McDonald’s?  I would ask this mainly because I don’t see how franchising the brand was a smart move for the McDonald’s entity to be profitable to the max. My other question would be, How did franchising change the original vision the McDonald brothers had for their business? Do you think it has been thwarted from what the wanted? I would ask this question mainly because at the beginning of the venture it seemed like the brothers were happy with their original size and production, yet Kroc wanted bigger and better things. He expanded the menu and increased locations which aren’t all modeled after the original design.

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion? Ray Kroc was not a young entrepreneur nor was he inheriting a team of people to help build this empire. He had to work for every gain that McDonald’s had. This meant driving across the country and long hours every day. He also had to put in the physical labor at the beginning while opening all these locations and eventually franchising the business.