Discussion Paper: The Founder
The movie The Founder portrays an exceptional view of the rise of the worlds most successful franchise: Mcdonald’s. The film kicks off by introducing the main character of the story: Ray Kroc. Kroc is a salesman who attempts to sell milkshake making machines to drive-in restaurants when he comes across Mcdonald’s in San Bernardino, California. Kroc sees the potential in the revolutionary business model, and meets with Richard and Maurice Mcdonald who are the owners. He uses his salesman expertise to try to persuade the brothers to start a franchise. He is so confident in the business model expansion that he states “Mcdonald’s can be the new American church.” The brothers are intrigued by the offer due to the fact that through trial and error, they have already once tried franchising the company and failing. Kroc convinces them that he is their missing piece in the operation, and they organize a contract where he earns about 1% of the profit from each burger sold. Throughout the expansion process, Kroc comes across many obstacles he must overcome for a shot at success. Perhaps the biggest of these was the lack of regulations enforced. One of the biggest worries of the brothers was the fact that they believed they were expanding too quickly, and lack of regulations helped prove their point. The film shows the risks that some entrepreneurs must take in order to be successful. For example, in one scene Ray Kroc had to take a mortgage out on his own home after the brothers refused to increase his pay in the contract.
John Lee Hancock did an excellent job in directing arguably one of the best movies I have ever seen from a personal standpoint. Despite having seen it many times already, there is always a new takeaway you can acquire from the film that can help you succeed in life. Three takeaways I got from the movie were the importance of trial and error, risk of entrepreneurship, and creative destruction. Within the film, Ray Kroc embodies an excellent illustration of how to start, and run a franchise. While the Mcdonald brothers needed Kroc in order to franchise the company, the film also takes a dark perspective into how he drives them out of their own business that I never knew prior to watching the film. Mcdonald’s has always been perceived as a “family operated business” while expanding when that is clearly not the case.
As discussed in class, the movie proves how important trial and error is in order to create success. If the brothers did not fail first and realize that lack of enforcement on regulations was their biggest challenge, they would not have been able to prevent it from happening frequently in the successful expansion. As discussed in class, and throughout the book, the risk of entrepreneurship is constantly brought up. You need to take risks at certain times in order to achieve maximum potential, and Mcdonald’s did just that. For Ray Kroc, everything went better than he could’ve imagined due to these risks, and he was perceived as a savior for the company. However, because the brothers took this risk they got bought out of their own company. In Schuempter’s readings and in class creative destruction has been a topic of discussion. Mcdonald’s is perhaps one of the best examples of this as it completely revolutionized the restaurant industry forever. The innovation of Mcdonald’s completely blew the competition out of the water, and created the concept of fast-food.