The Founder is a movie that details the story of the formation of the worldwide famous company, McDonald’s. The movie centers on Ray Kroc, who while not the actual founder of McDonald’s, was able to take control of the company and take it to the next level, which is the multibillion dollar corporation it is today. Kroc partnered with its first founders, the McDonald brothers, and franchised it to all over the country, first starting by making middle class people the owners of these restaurants, providing more incentive for these bosses to make sure the franchise gets off the ground. Kroc later realizes that owning the land that the restaurants sits on gives him leverage and bargaining power to take control of the whole company from the brothers, so he starts to buy the lots and takes over the entirety of McDonald’s. The movie is entrepreneurial as it shows the expansion of the business. The company goes from a simple partnership to one of the biggest C corporations in the world. The film is interesting because it shows insight into how a partnership can go wrong. Kroc may be the protagonist of the film, but he practically steals McDonald’s from the brothers. In growing his share of the company from partnership, to establishing Franchise Realty Corporation, and finally molding that into the world famous McDonald’s Corporation. Kroc is best described as an unethical entrepreneur, as he uses backdoor tactics like buying the real estate of the franchises and bringing down the quality of the food, from the high quality milkshakes of the McDonald Brothers to the powdered milkshakes of his wife Joan’s design, in order to raise his own profits and take the company to higher and higher heights. Creating a successful business is the ultimate goal of an entrepreneur, but Kroc’s methodology both positively and negatively affected society. He brought one of the world’s biggest companies from a small mom and pop store to the heights it reaches today, but he also brought down the quality of its product, so, while the company grew to one of the most famous restaurants in the world, it became much less healthy and low quality. Society fully accepted Kroc’s type no of entrepreneurship, and this is a controversial topic. Had they known he took the company from the original owners and forced a takeover on his own part, maybe McDonald’s wouldn’t have blown up like it did. But, McDonald’s was widely accepted due to its cheap prices and medium quality food. People like having an option for food that they know is going to be solid and always be relatively close to them, wherever they are. In bigger cities, you can pretty much find a McDonald’s every 1-3 miles, which speaks to Kroc’s success as an entrepreneur. Society embraced the company, despite it’s secret, tainted past. If the McDonald brothers' vision of the company had been the one to expand, the food would’ve been more high quality, but there wouldn’t have been as many location ouldn’t have been as many locations. It is these types of trade-offs that define entrepreneurship, as you must decide whether to go for higher quality food, higher customer satisfaction, less locations, and lower profits or lower quality food, lower customer satisfaction, more locations, and higher profits. The type of entrepreneurship that Kroc used to grab control of the company is almost like that of a corporate raider, who finds a stagnating company and revitalizes it. However, he focuses on making the business in his own image, which makes it a twisted sole proprietorship of its own inside of a partnership. Society accepted Kroc’s vision over that of the McDonald Brothers, showing the entrepreneurial vision that Kroc had was world changing. He found the gap in the market for quick, cheap, and good fast food and his vision was fulfilled completely. This type of entrepreneur can do either immense harm or immense good to an industry, and luckily in Kroc’s case, his choice to take McDonald’s nationwide appeared to do more good than harm for the economy.
