Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, Chuck, let's listen
Speaker 1: to some Devo. So, Chuck, got a good feeling? You
Speaker 1: like that? I love Devo, Dude, that's my favorite Devo song.
Speaker 1: Acron Boys. Yeah, they're from Ohio, late seventies, early eighties
Speaker 1: quintessential new wave band Devo. We just listened to gut Feeling.
Speaker 1: It originally appeared on their album Q Are we not
Speaker 1: men a say it? Chuck? We are Devo? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: with an exclamation and not the right yeah. It doesn't
Speaker 1: say no, it doesn't um and uh. I got my
Speaker 1: copy from the soundtrack of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic
Speaker 1: with Steve z Sue, Right, Inn't that? Is it Life
Speaker 1: Aquatic or Aquatic Life? The Life Aquatic? People are probably
Speaker 1: like I thought this was some McDonald's. Yes, you would
Speaker 1: think so. And here's the reason. Why do you remember that?
Speaker 1: I just said, like thirty seconds ago. Divo is the
Speaker 1: quintessential late seventies early eighties new wave band. I do
Speaker 1: remember that. Well. Apparently the designers of Happy Meal toys
Speaker 1: that McDonald's agree. They've released a series of Happy Meals
Speaker 1: toys that are little characters based on different genres of music.
Speaker 1: And there's one called new Wave Nigel. He's got these
Speaker 1: thin sunglasses and spiky hair, and he happens to have
Speaker 1: a very recognizable hat looks like a flower pot that's
Speaker 1: upside down exactly. Uh. And to Mark Mother's Ball and
Speaker 1: the other guys in Devo, it looked a lot like
Speaker 1: what they call their energy Dome hats, which they trademarked.
Speaker 1: So now they're suing MacDonald's for unlicensed use of this
Speaker 1: of this hat McDonald's exactly. Yeah, that's a pretty accurate. Actually, Chuck,
Speaker 1: McDonald's at any given point in time has a handful
Speaker 1: of lawsuits against them. I think that's any big company, though,
Speaker 1: it is. But that's that's that's a good point. McDonald's
Speaker 1: has become this emblematic symbolic face. The golden arches are
Speaker 1: like the logo of more than just McDonald's, logo of
Speaker 1: of corporate America, of America, obesity, uh, mick jobs, globalization, globalization, glocalization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that, of course. Yeah, there's there's there's
Speaker 1: just for being a fast food restaurant. They've come to
Speaker 1: take on these huge representations of these enormous concepts, and
Speaker 1: I gotta admit some they've handled well, some they haven't.
Speaker 1: But they're still standing. You know, well they love it.
Speaker 1: You take the good with the bad as much as
Speaker 1: they hate being the symbol of the face of a
Speaker 1: b CD. They're like, yeah, but we sell a lot
Speaker 1: of big macs exactly. We know that you like him,
Speaker 1: fat boy. Yeah, that's that's kind of the idea that
Speaker 1: I have them to chuck. Yes, we've got Devo out
Speaker 1: of the way. We can check that off the list.
Speaker 1: All right, you want to talk about Mickey D's, should
Speaker 1: we go? Let's start with history, because it's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting history. It is a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: probably think, oh, yeah, I know about McDonald's history because
Speaker 1: I've stood there in line and read the plaque that
Speaker 1: says Ray Kroc invented McDonald's and he started it all
Speaker 1: up the embossed plaque. Not true. No, Actually, I often
Speaker 1: wondered as a child why the founder of McDonald's last
Speaker 1: name wasn't McDonald's, it was Croc. But it is because
Speaker 1: mc croc is would you buy a burger from a
Speaker 1: place called m Cross. It's like buying a piece of
Speaker 1: furniture from unpainted huff Huns. Right, very nice. Uh. How
Speaker 1: many times do we reference Cohen Brothers films all the time? Uh?
Speaker 1: Flashback to the Great Depression. Yeah, let's go have another
Speaker 1: piece of pie. That kind of time period, that song
Speaker 1: would have gone, well, it would have h the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Dick and mac McDonald. You might not recognize that name.
Speaker 1: They were running a movie theater in California and not
Speaker 1: doing too well. First question, Okay, who names their kid
Speaker 1: mac McDonald a little suspect? Pride? Wacky parents? Um, And
Speaker 1: they were not doing too great, and so they noticed
Speaker 1: across the street. It's literally one of these stories. We're like, boy,
Speaker 1: that hot dog business is gangbusters. We should open up
Speaker 1: a hot dog stand. So they borrowed five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which seems like a lot of money at the time
Speaker 1: to open a hot dog's name, no doubt. Well, I
Speaker 1: think I get the impression that they opened like one
Speaker 1: of those very early diners because they call it the
Speaker 1: air Dome hot dog Stand, right, yeah, air drone air drone, Yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I get the same thing. And by nineteen forty, they
Speaker 1: moved that from Arcadia, which was the original location, to
Speaker 1: San Bernardino and they changed the name to McDonald Barbecue. Right,
Speaker 1: so they went from a hot dog stand to a
Speaker 1: barbecue joint. Well it wasn't barbecue, that just meant on
Speaker 1: the grill, I think because they served burgers and burgers,
Speaker 1: fries and milkshakes. Yeah, that that change was a m
Speaker 1: It was a big deal because they dropped a lot
Speaker 1: of their stuff. Right, Well, they shut down, they closed
Speaker 1: the business for a little while to retool, which was
Speaker 1: you just kind of didn't do this at the time
Speaker 1: they were, Yeah, because they were already pretty successful. This
Speaker 1: wasn't like a slou che business. But the the McDonald's
Speaker 1: brothers UM or the brothers McDonald um felt like they
Speaker 1: could do it better. I guess one of them had
Speaker 1: some some sort of inspiration from the assembly line, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think from the auto industry, and so they created
Speaker 1: the Speedy System Speedy System sp E E, d E
Speaker 1: and dude. That's where it really changed the world as
Speaker 1: we know it. And that's not overstating it. That was
Speaker 1: the birth of modern fast food. It is. They also
Speaker 1: did away with the car hops like people on roller skates.
Speaker 1: He used to come up and um, take your order
Speaker 1: at your car. You had to come in. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: more than anything else, they changed the fast food industry
Speaker 1: with that speedy system. Basically, they took the principles of
Speaker 1: the assembly line and applied it to food. So if
Speaker 1: you were, you know, in charge of cooking the burgers,
Speaker 1: you didn't put the burger on, the buns on the
Speaker 1: burger like. There were different people involved in the burger
Speaker 1: making process. I can attest to this because my first
Speaker 1: job was at McDonald's. Well I worked there too, for
Speaker 1: an hour. We'll talk about that later because that's some
Speaker 1: We have some famous cohorts that worked at McDonald's that
Speaker 1: I looked up nice and we were not famous, but
Speaker 1: we worked there. I didn't know your story. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear that. Uh. So they were really successful.
Speaker 1: Over the next six years, they sold twenty one franchises,
Speaker 1: open nine outlets themselves, and they were doing so well
Speaker 1: that they said, we need these multi mixers that can
Speaker 1: mix five milkshakes at once because we need to increase
Speaker 1: the speed. And their multi mixer salesman was a man
Speaker 1: named Ray Croc. Here is where the little bit of
Speaker 1: fate comes in, right, these guys were running. I think
Speaker 1: there there eight shakes that he can make at a time,
Speaker 1: multi mixer five shakes. Now, they ordered eight of them
Speaker 1: and they had them running all day long. And Ray
Speaker 1: crocs like, it's the most multi mixers anyone's ever ordered
Speaker 1: it once. So he actually went out to Burdue to
Speaker 1: find out what was going on. Yeah, remember the Hell's
Speaker 1: Angels podcast? Did San Bernardina? Sorry, yeah, that's okay, but um,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't go see it himself, and it's like, what
Speaker 1: is going on here? He was on board immediately. Apparently
Speaker 1: Jacques Pepine put it um, the famous French chef Jack
Speaker 1: pipin Uh, he wrote an article about Ray Kroc and
Speaker 1: as he put it um, he pitched the idea of
Speaker 1: the brothers to really start expanding their operation. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: where would we get somebody to do this for us?
Speaker 1: And Ray Kroc said, what about me? And he became
Speaker 1: their franchising agent. Right, yeah, apparently he his his original
Speaker 1: um motivation was to sell multi mixers, and he figured
Speaker 1: if he could open up more franchises, they're selling tons
Speaker 1: of milkshakes. They're lousy with milkshakes. So I can sell
Speaker 1: more multi mixers. So that was kind of how it
Speaker 1: started out. Yeah, and he opened his first McDonald's franchise
Speaker 1: uh in de Plaine, Illinois, right, And that's actually the
Speaker 1: now a museum that McDonald's location. There are two. There's
Speaker 1: a Big Mac Museum, which we'll talk about where the
Speaker 1: Big Matt came from later, and then there's the McDonald's museum. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So he opens up that one and in the next
Speaker 1: five years, dude, he franchises two hundred more restaurants. What's
Speaker 1: amazing though, is that he didn't he wasn't filthy rich
Speaker 1: in that next five years. He actually had a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble getting these things off the ground. Right. So
Speaker 1: we've got one thing under our belt when we're describing
Speaker 1: the success of McDonald's, right, and that is the speedy
Speaker 1: system using the principles of the assembly line for fast food.
Speaker 1: The other thing that made McDonald's as successful as it is,
Speaker 1: um was the real estate principles that the company took on, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harry he hired a gout named Harry Soniborn and he
Speaker 1: only worked there for like a decade, but that completely
Speaker 1: rewrote their business model, uh to the point where they
Speaker 1: were making more money off of real estate than selling hamburgers, right,
Speaker 1: Because originally Ray Kroc would be like, hey, uh, we've
Speaker 1: got this kind of newish franchise. And McDonald's was in
Speaker 1: the first fast food restaurant. Howard Johnson's was around already,
Speaker 1: White Castle was around already, They had they had competition right, um,
Speaker 1: and these bigger guys who had been around for a
Speaker 1: while could just build as many as they wanted to
Speaker 1: in a region because they had tons of capital. Well,
Speaker 1: McDonald's franchise was still pretty young, so when they went
Speaker 1: to franchisees, these were very hopeful people who are maybe
Speaker 1: uh were were for the underdog, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: sort of green. They weren't like super investors, right, and
Speaker 1: so they didn't have a lot of money. So these
Speaker 1: guys would have to basically opened one franchise at a
Speaker 1: time because the building expense in the land expense for
Speaker 1: so much. What Santa Born came up with it was
Speaker 1: like just lease the land and then sub lease it
Speaker 1: to the to the franchise e and then not only
Speaker 1: that mark up the leasing fees, but initially it was
Speaker 1: twenty percent over what they were paying the lease. The place.
Speaker 1: Then they up at the forty and then finally when
Speaker 1: McDonald started rolling, it was either forty or five percent
Speaker 1: of sales, whichever was greater. So yeah, right, the the
Speaker 1: franchise realty corporation, uh made as much money as as
Speaker 1: the McDonald's corporation for a while. If it's really it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Still it was a stroke of genius, yeah, basically, And
Speaker 1: so that enabled Croc uh in nineteen sixty one to
Speaker 1: buy out the McDonald's I'm sorry, the McDonald brothers for
Speaker 1: what was it, two point seven million in like nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, yeah, two point seven in nineteen sixty one. Uh,
Speaker 1: they gave up the rights to the McDonald's name. Uh,
Speaker 1: Dick and mac. Do you want to what happened to them?
Speaker 1: They reopened the original San Bernardino joint as the Big
Speaker 1: M and h Ray Kroc was like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: like you reopening that original store, So I'm gonna open
Speaker 1: McDonald's down the street and run you out of business.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened, and that that strategy still followed
Speaker 1: today if you pay any attention to Home Depot and Lows.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, thank you for that. And uh, apparently Kroc
Speaker 1: and you know this is in his autobiography, so we're
Speaker 1: not slinging stones here. He actually fostered this bitterness between
Speaker 1: himself and Dick McDonald, who was their surviving brother, and
Speaker 1: Kroc considered the planes location the original first McDonald's. He
Speaker 1: never wavered from that, and himself the founder well obviously
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the emboss plaque, he never hear
Speaker 1: any mention McDonald brothers. So people have challenged that from
Speaker 1: time to time, enough so that the McDonald's Corporation's official
Speaker 1: site now says, yes, Dick and mc McDonald founded a
Speaker 1: ref draw and Ray Kroc, you know, originally came on board,
Speaker 1: but he's the founder of the McDonald's Corporation. So that's
Speaker 1: how they kind of justify that. Got you. I do
Speaker 1: want to point out to that, um, unbeknownst to the
Speaker 1: franchise e, the capital that they got from raising the
Speaker 1: money for you know, with the leases, they used that
Speaker 1: to fund the opening of other franchises. So that's how
Speaker 1: they started kind of rolling and uh, sort of like
Speaker 1: a puny scheme a little bit, but this one was
Speaker 1: slightly more legal. It was on the open. I had
Speaker 1: a pretty good payoff apparently uh. Kroc took McDonald's public
Speaker 1: in sixty five, and if you had bought two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of stock that year and it's initial public offering,
Speaker 1: it would be worth three point five million today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a bad return in an investment. So he
Speaker 1: bought the company in sixty one, by sixty three, he
Speaker 1: had opened up his five by sixty five if they
Speaker 1: went public, and then twenty years after they went public,
Speaker 1: they were included in the dal Jones industrial average. That
Speaker 1: is what's called a super rapid ascent into wealth. The
Speaker 1: dalve Jones only has thirty companies, and McDonald's is one
Speaker 1: of them. What's more, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: explains that success, but that kind of also supports it,
Speaker 1: is that UM they started catering towards kids and cultivating
Speaker 1: customer loyalty at a very early age thanks to a
Speaker 1: guy named Willard Scott, who you may know was the
Speaker 1: weather man for the Today Show for many years, the
Speaker 1: Demented Smucker's Jelly spokesperson or Boza the clown yeah, or
Speaker 1: Ronald McDonald. He was the first one. He was first
Speaker 1: in a long long line of Ronald McDonald's um and
Speaker 1: he was the first character, and then pretty soon they
Speaker 1: started adding more and more McDonald's characters. But let's stick
Speaker 1: with Ronald for a second. Did you know that they
Speaker 1: they introduced Ronald McDonald in right or I think it
Speaker 1: was sixty three, Okay, sixty three. By nineteen nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: more kids could identify Ronald McDonald than they could the
Speaker 1: American President. That's American kids of them could identify Ronald
Speaker 1: McDonald six years after he was introduced. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: my research, I don't know that's true or not, but
Speaker 1: it says that Willard Scott was originally let go because
Speaker 1: he was too fat and they didn't want a big
Speaker 1: fat clown has their spokesman for their food. He is
Speaker 1: a leaner than usual clown except for those huge hawk
Speaker 1: thighs that he's always had. The saddle bag gup like
Speaker 1: they're writing pants. Yeah, okay, so they come up with
Speaker 1: Ronald McDonald, but they're trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: expand the characters. Right, well, Chuck, you and I grew
Speaker 1: up in the eighties. We've written a fry guy or
Speaker 1: two before out in the playground, right, Um, Hamburglar, the Hamburglar, Grimace. Um,
Speaker 1: You've got Mary mccheese, who was one of my personal favorites. Um,
Speaker 1: the big mac cop. Oh yeah, god, I wish you
Speaker 1: had his name. I do too. Well, there's some listener
Speaker 1: mail force. Um, and all of these people originally were
Speaker 1: going to be licensed characters from Sid marty Croft, the
Speaker 1: guys who used to eat a ton of acid and
Speaker 1: create children's shows HR Puff and Stuff. Right. Um, So
Speaker 1: originally McDonald's corporation approached Sid marty Croft and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to license your Puff and Stuff characters. Sider
Speaker 1: marty Croft said, okay, we can, We'll totally do that.
Speaker 1: They waited for McDonald's call back, waited for him to
Speaker 1: call back. McDonald's finally called back and said now we're
Speaker 1: not gonna do it and blatantly ripped him off. So
Speaker 1: Sid marty Croft like, oh yeah, Sigma and the Sea Monster,
Speaker 1: they kind of all had that same thing. I saw
Speaker 1: commercial from nineteen seventy once, the first one that Grimace
Speaker 1: appears in, and it actually features a young Jodie Foster.
Speaker 1: It is straight out of the H and R Puff
Speaker 1: and HR Puff and Stuff shows. Like instead of flowers,
Speaker 1: there's little cheese burgers everywhere. I mean, it's just completely
Speaker 1: like a Sid marty Craft ripop, so much so that
Speaker 1: when the Kraft Brothers sued, uh, they were awarded fifty grand.
Speaker 1: But that was it. But did you know this Grimace,
Speaker 1: who's just bumbling, puppy, purple weird sidekick of Ronald best
Speaker 1: friend Um was originally Evil Grimace, which is probably why
Speaker 1: they called him Grimmace. He had three pairs of arms
Speaker 1: and they were meant to steal as many shakes as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they figured that's just creepy and don't like it,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna put it back to two one pair
Speaker 1: of arms and he's gonna be nice. Yeah, Evil Grimace.
Speaker 1: You know that Sid marty Croft had the place in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: You didn't grow up here, but when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Sid marty Croft Land was at the top of the
Speaker 1: top floor of the Omni, the old Armni you know
Speaker 1: what became Philips Arena. What. Yeah, there was his escalator
Speaker 1: I remember. I mean now it's probably not as long
Speaker 1: as I remember, but it seemed like it was like
Speaker 1: the longest escalator in the world. Time that went to
Speaker 1: the top to Sid in marty Croftland. Did they create
Speaker 1: the banana splits too? I don't think so. Were they
Speaker 1: from Atlanta? I don't know the connection there. I know
Speaker 1: it was a pretty big failure. Yeah, it closed down
Speaker 1: in short order, but I went. I'll bet it was
Speaker 1: real popular among the hip teenagers, I bet, especially especially
Speaker 1: in the nineteen right up there Alley. All right, Josh,
Speaker 1: let's say you wanted to open a McDonald's restaurant back
Speaker 1: in the day, your Ray Croc and how would you
Speaker 1: go about spotting a good location? What are you looking for? Well,
Speaker 1: first I put on my tin gallon hat. I would
Speaker 1: board a helicopter, which he did. I would start flying
Speaker 1: around areas that were up and coming, and I would
Speaker 1: try to find uh an intersection with the church, a school,
Speaker 1: maybe some other stores, and I would PLoP it right there. Yep,
Speaker 1: That's exactly what he did. And specifically, I think physical
Speaker 1: space wise, developers look for more than thirty two thousand
Speaker 1: square feet, which is a little over ninety seven a
Speaker 1: height of twenty two ft, which I don't understand. I
Speaker 1: guess that the height and clearance is what they're looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: elevation they're looking for for the so the McDonald's exactly,
Speaker 1: and they still to this day look to place them
Speaker 1: near intersections with traffic lights or airports, schools, a ton
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, and originally they they thought behind it
Speaker 1: was they wanted to put it where the heart of
Speaker 1: the community was. Well, no, they wanted to put it
Speaker 1: where as many people as possible. We're going to pass
Speaker 1: by three times a day. And they still use that
Speaker 1: classic speedy type system, and I'm sure they don't call
Speaker 1: it that, but still the assembly line automated stuff is
Speaker 1: taken over many aspects. Obviously, if you've been in McDonald's
Speaker 1: in the last decade, you've seen the automatic fry cooker
Speaker 1: and the automatic drink filler and uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: go to the drive through window and there's a little
Speaker 1: screen telling you what you're ordering. Dude, let's talk about
Speaker 1: drive through window, because there are certain McDonald's in the
Speaker 1: United States where when you pull up to the drive
Speaker 1: through many you place your order, you are speaking to
Speaker 1: someone in a call center in another state. Yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you know that there's another state or another country, another state? Okay,
Speaker 1: I think there are ones where they I think there
Speaker 1: are some that are in other countries. Yes, But the
Speaker 1: based on the New York Times article I read they
Speaker 1: were in these were McDonald's in Missouri, and they were
Speaker 1: talking to people in Colorado and they would take a
Speaker 1: snapshot right of you the computer in the call center. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when you get to the window to pick up
Speaker 1: your food, they see a photo and they say, well,
Speaker 1: this is that that Chuck guy. He's all tubby in
Speaker 1: his front seat and he's salivating for a big Max.
Speaker 1: So here's your big Mac. And then they say that
Speaker 1: the picture is destroyed. But that is what they say,
Speaker 1: because I wondered about that destroyed. Uh. Yeah, So this
Speaker 1: McDonald's is with I think because of as much money
Speaker 1: as the company has, it's long been on the cutting edge,
Speaker 1: like new technology, anything anything that can be used to
Speaker 1: um cut down costs. McDonald's is into Yeah. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: they're also into believe this or not, cleanliness. Yeah, Ray Croc,
Speaker 1: they said, was like obsessed with being clean. I got
Speaker 1: the impression here was a tatto c d. Maybe. Well.
Speaker 1: My my theory is, and I worked in the restaurant business.
Speaker 1: You can never have a restaurant that's too clean, So
Speaker 1: I appreciate his dedication to cleanliness. Apparently, like to say,
Speaker 1: if you've got time to lean, you've got time to
Speaker 1: clean and anytime somebody said that to me after they
Speaker 1: turned around and be like, yeah, given the old high
Speaker 1: hard one. Sure you know there's a lot of leaning
Speaker 1: in the McDonald's around my neighborhood. Actually, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there are most of them. But uh, even that apparently
Speaker 1: is a step up. As far as McDonald's and other
Speaker 1: countries go, McDonald's is widely credited for changing the standards
Speaker 1: in the industry, the restaurant industry for bathroom cleanliness in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, yeah you know that. Yeah, and uh Thailand,
Speaker 1: social um social interaction, because apparently in Hong Kong there
Speaker 1: was never such a thing as like organized lines to
Speaker 1: stand in line and get something. So they were literally
Speaker 1: forced to stand in line for the first time to
Speaker 1: to complete their order. So some say that it brought
Speaker 1: some social graces and organization to these kind of chaotic scenes.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I believe that because when I
Speaker 1: looked in l a, I would always get muscled in
Speaker 1: on by a little Asian women and they used to
Speaker 1: bother me. Then I was like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: bet you in their country, you're fighting to get in
Speaker 1: position to get your you know, whatever's in the market.
Speaker 1: So it's exactly what they want you to think. I
Speaker 1: opened was that I was duped into being kind. I
Speaker 1: was like, I understand, cut in front of me. That's fine, exactly.
Speaker 1: Here you go, lady, welcome to the US. Right. What
Speaker 1: a sucker, Chuck? What's your favorite menu? Ita at McDonald's
Speaker 1: answer me, I'm gonna go with the the hangover Helper
Speaker 1: double quarter pounder with cheese, mayonnaise only at French fries
Speaker 1: on top, and smush it all together mayonnaise only, no
Speaker 1: catchup or mustard. I don't do that stuff. Pickles onions.
Speaker 1: You gotta have the sesame seed bun though, So you
Speaker 1: have a bun of burger cheese, burger bun with mayonnaise
Speaker 1: and French fries. Yeah, okay, I don't think that appears
Speaker 1: on the menu. Really. Oh that's the Chuck special. I'm
Speaker 1: a straight up double cheese burger guy. Yeah, those are good.
Speaker 1: But we can talk a little bit about the history
Speaker 1: of a few of their menu items because I find
Speaker 1: it kind of interesting too. That's why I asked you.
Speaker 1: The filet of fish was born in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: because at the time we had really great Catholics in
Speaker 1: America who had abstained from eating meat on Friday, and
Speaker 1: Ray Kroc was like, uh, we got lagging sails on
Speaker 1: Friday because all these Catholics, can I we invent something
Speaker 1: here to to make up for the sales, right, And
Speaker 1: they were losing sales to places like Big Boy. I
Speaker 1: love Big Boy. Um. Sure. And the reason why they
Speaker 1: were losing it these sales was because these places had
Speaker 1: a she alternative. So Ray Kroc comes up with the
Speaker 1: brilliant idea and it is the hula burger, right, which
Speaker 1: was a slice of pineapple instead of meat on a button. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a very good idea, No, it wasn't. But luckily
Speaker 1: by this time McDonald's corporation was smart enough to know
Speaker 1: that they needed to test menu items first. Um. And
Speaker 1: they tested it. But at the same time they tested
Speaker 1: another item called the filet of fish, Yes, which was
Speaker 1: I thought, I think thought up by a franchise z
Speaker 1: correct Lou Growing and he thought of it and put
Speaker 1: it on his menu, which McDonald said, that's cool. Let's
Speaker 1: see how it goes. And it went over like gangbusters,
Speaker 1: and uh, they said, you know what, We're gonna add
Speaker 1: this to our national menu. Yeah. So a franchise e
Speaker 1: beat out the CEO and chairman of McDonald's Corporation. That's
Speaker 1: something that well, that means you' smart enough to listen
Speaker 1: to him as well. Yeah, well, I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of a recurring theme. It seems like Ray Croc surrounded
Speaker 1: himself with people who were smart and sharp, but also
Speaker 1: he listened to him and when they were, you know,
Speaker 1: milling about the office, he'd make them push a broom
Speaker 1: or something when they were walking down the hall. If
Speaker 1: you're too busy to lean, you're too busy to clean. Now,
Speaker 1: if you got time to lean, you get time to clean.
Speaker 1: And the Big Mac two had similar origins. It was
Speaker 1: a franchisees idea out of the Pittsburgh area, right yeah,
Speaker 1: which is key I think to its success. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that it was in Pittsburgh and it wasn't
Speaker 1: in like, you know, Los Angeles. Very health conscious Los
Speaker 1: Angeles seventies though was LA has always been that way.
Speaker 1: Jim Delegatti, who was invented the Big Mac, which we
Speaker 1: all know is to all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles,
Speaker 1: onion on a seed bun with the third bun there
Speaker 1: in the middle, which is key to just keep it
Speaker 1: all together. Evidently, so people in Pittsburgh said this is awesome,
Speaker 1: and Ray Croc said, Okay, we're gonna add this to
Speaker 1: our menu. Right. It actually became their signature sandwich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy? Yeah? And I find it odd that
Speaker 1: earlier we mentioned that the McDonald brothers opened up their
Speaker 1: other restaurant once their name was taken. It was called
Speaker 1: The Big Might. Apparently there's no connection there, but it
Speaker 1: seems all hanky to me. The Big Mac in the
Speaker 1: Big Um. Huh. Well I hadn't made that connection, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think? No, I'll tell you what I think.
Speaker 1: I think Big Mac is a reference to truck drivers
Speaker 1: and big guys who would eat a sandwich like that,
Speaker 1: which is actually kind of daring because you're almost automatically
Speaker 1: cutting out your female customers, you know, the big or
Speaker 1: petite Mac. Maybe it would have been a better name
Speaker 1: for it, whichever you like. Uh, and Chuck, you mentioned
Speaker 1: the McDonald's brothers in their original um restaurant. Well they
Speaker 1: kept selling hot dogs for a while, right, Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why didn't McDonald's sell hot dogs? Do you want to know?
Speaker 1: Because Ray Kroc felt that the mystery meats and I
Speaker 1: just made air quotes put into hot dogs. Uh didn't
Speaker 1: fit or live up to McDonald's standards. So no more
Speaker 1: hot dogs. Nope, and you've never even though you have
Speaker 1: pure I'll be Frank's now. Of course, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: did back then. I still won't find one out of spy.
Speaker 1: That's my idea. Uh Josh. Flash forward to ninety three
Speaker 1: when my favorite McDonald's menu item all times. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we are talking clearly about the circular broken yolk egg
Speaker 1: with cheese Canadian bacon on an English muffin, which in
Speaker 1: Canada they just call it bacon, right, a k a.
Speaker 1: The egg McMuffin. And another franchise e heard Peterson operated
Speaker 1: six McDonald's. He um. He actually came up with the
Speaker 1: first national ad slogan where quality starts fresh every day.
Speaker 1: Convinced Ray Crock to try it out. He loved it,
Speaker 1: And then they got into the breakfast business, right, and
Speaker 1: they debuted it with another McDonald land character named Bertie
Speaker 1: the Early Bird. I remember that. Yeah, let's remember Bertie.
Speaker 1: She was the She was clearly a female. She had
Speaker 1: like a orange flight suit and a scarf and flying.
Speaker 1: Remember that. And we got one more to talk about
Speaker 1: you can't talk about McDonald's without the chicken McNugget. And
Speaker 1: actually remember this one clearly because I was right at
Speaker 1: the age, yeah, twelve years old, jerke Uh. This was
Speaker 1: actually thought of by a CEO, which was which was
Speaker 1: rare because usually the franchisees uh owners were coming up
Speaker 1: with these. Fred Turner was the chairman, and he put
Speaker 1: out a request and said, you know what, he commissioned it.
Speaker 1: I love the quote. He commissioned a chicken finger food
Speaker 1: without bones. About the size of your thumb. Pretty specific.
Speaker 1: So they came back here. It is sort of even
Speaker 1: looks like a thumb a little bit. And now now
Speaker 1: that I see it, it's gonna be tough to eat them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used to eat those. Oh, I used to eat
Speaker 1: them like crazy. Not anymore, nothing but barbecue sauce. I
Speaker 1: would do a mix of the barbecue in the sweeten summer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good mix, it is. So we need to
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit of criticism, right, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and the good that they do. We'll follow with the
Speaker 1: good that they do. Well. You know, Devo is not
Speaker 1: the only people who have filed lawsuit against McDonald's. Neither
Speaker 1: are sid and Marty Croft, right, and it goes both ways.
Speaker 1: McDonald's has been known to follow a lawsuit or two right, specifically,
Speaker 1: probably most famously against green Peace. Yeah, the McLibel case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you read the McLibel pamphlet? Uh No, not the
Speaker 1: actual pamphlet, but I kind of know what it's all about.
Speaker 1: It's a little broad, in my opinion to have drummed
Speaker 1: up that much ire and anger. But in the mid
Speaker 1: eighties to London, green Peace members um basically started printing
Speaker 1: pamphlets and I guess what it was was at the time,
Speaker 1: nobody was talking about this stuff, and maybe they were
Speaker 1: the first, like about cutting down rainforest for grazing land
Speaker 1: for cattle, that McDonald's was using, um any humane practices
Speaker 1: of killing the cattle, um, exploiting workers, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess now they think about it. It's so ingrained
Speaker 1: into our culture now, awareness like that that maybe in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties it just totally wasn't. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: got McDonald's attention to because they sued these people and
Speaker 1: they won. They won because they these guys who put
Speaker 1: out the pamphlet couldn't back up everything that they stayed
Speaker 1: in the pamphlet with facts. Do you know why? Because
Speaker 1: they were they were poor, and they worked for Green Peace,
Speaker 1: and they defended themselves. So these two acted as their
Speaker 1: own lawyers, and McDonald's lawyers buried them. They wouldn't give them, um,
Speaker 1: you know, documents that they asked for. They buried him
Speaker 1: in procedural stuff, um and and one. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, these two people and Green Piece as a
Speaker 1: whole are just doing as much pr as they can
Speaker 1: about the case. McDonald's just took a huge hit. That
Speaker 1: was probably the first real turning point as far as
Speaker 1: McDonald's image goes. Yeah, where it wasn't just like McDonald's
Speaker 1: is the greatest thing ever, right, And people started to
Speaker 1: really kind of pay attention to like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: where donald said Ronald McDonald said he loved my child.
Speaker 1: What do you mean he really just wants profits, you know? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were famously sued in the nineties with, um,
Speaker 1: the hot coffee that's spilled on the old lady's lap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I always thought that was just, like, uh, um,
Speaker 1: an example of how we need tort reform. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize why the woman was awarded the money she got.
Speaker 1: Third degree burns in her crotch and was in the
Speaker 1: hospital for eight days. Right. But the reason that the
Speaker 1: jury awarded her such a huge amount it was in
Speaker 1: the tens of millions, I think, right. Uh, it just said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much it was specifically, but compensatory
Speaker 1: and puneted damage. It was a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: it was for spilling coffee on her her crotch. But
Speaker 1: the reason that the jury awarded her such so much money, um,
Speaker 1: was because McDonald's was well aware of the problem and
Speaker 1: uh for had for many years received hundreds of complaints
Speaker 1: but just didn't do anything about it that their coffee
Speaker 1: was too hot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Josh and
Speaker 1: the nineties again McDonald's took a bold move and came
Speaker 1: out and said, you know what, We're no longer going
Speaker 1: to cook our French fries and bee fat even though
Speaker 1: it's so good, I know, do you remember the change? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna cook it in vegetable oil. So that
Speaker 1: was their big announcement. And then this sort of implied
Speaker 1: in a way that they were vegetarian fries because it's
Speaker 1: just potatoes cooked and vegetable oil. Not true, because they
Speaker 1: contain beef flavoring and uh sued so Hindus obviously had
Speaker 1: vegetarians had a big problem with us. But McDonald's very
Speaker 1: fairly said, hey man, we never said that these were
Speaker 1: vegetarian fries, but we'll pay up anyway. They ponied up
Speaker 1: like ten million bucks in an apology. And that's what
Speaker 1: you do when you got deep pockets. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: pay up a little bit, apologize, it goes away, and
Speaker 1: the next person the line steps up to suit you. Right,
Speaker 1: But then in the meantime, five million people step up
Speaker 1: in line to order a double cheeseburger. Yeah, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that pays for everything. A couple of more big, high
Speaker 1: profile things. That was the book Fast Food Nation that
Speaker 1: charged McDonald's with globalization and uh anti union tactics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, and that that was also mentioned
Speaker 1: in the McLibel pamphlet. They were um that they only
Speaker 1: use or only employee workers who are basically down on
Speaker 1: their luck, have nothing to have, have no alternatives. They
Speaker 1: they overwork them, they exploited them, so there's high turnover,
Speaker 1: so there's no chance of unions or unionizing among McDonald's employees.
Speaker 1: And then Morgan Spurlock, of course with the film Supersized Me.
Speaker 1: The documentary famously went on a thirty day diet of
Speaker 1: nothing but McDonald's and no exercise and almost died. And
Speaker 1: did you watch it now? I've never seen it. It
Speaker 1: was entertaining and he he does like McDonald's was in
Speaker 1: the firing uh scope, But he was making a statement
Speaker 1: about the fact that, you know, when we were kids,
Speaker 1: a large drink was like eighteen ounces, and now you
Speaker 1: can get like a seventy two ounce soda. Do we
Speaker 1: really need that? Right? And actually that had some uh,
Speaker 1: some big effects I guess in McDonald's, like they took
Speaker 1: their supersize option off of their menu, like right after
Speaker 1: the film was screened at Sundance. Yeah, they went pro
Speaker 1: active on this one big time, which was pretty smart.
Speaker 1: And actually I guess it's not that much action, but
Speaker 1: still it was a big deal. A little indie filmmaker
Speaker 1: got them to change their menu so instead of supersize
Speaker 1: is now called large. Um chuck was Fast Food Nation
Speaker 1: turned into food Ink? The movie is that? Is the
Speaker 1: movie Food Ink based on Fast Food Nation. No, there
Speaker 1: is a movie Fast Food Nation as well that Richard
Speaker 1: link Lender did. No, you're thinking of waking life. Okay,
Speaker 1: we should also probably say that there's some some good
Speaker 1: that this company has done, aside from making great greasy hamburgers,
Speaker 1: which I do love. I don't even Donald's much, but
Speaker 1: boy is it good. Obviously, first and foremost, you've got
Speaker 1: the Ronald McDonald House. Right, great, great organization. What do
Speaker 1: they do Well? If you have a kid who is
Speaker 1: in the hospital a lot um, especially out of state, uh,
Speaker 1: seeing a specialist, and you're family needs to be there
Speaker 1: to support the kid, but you don't really have enough
Speaker 1: for a six month hostels stay. There are houses around
Speaker 1: the country called Ronald McDonald Houses that your family can
Speaker 1: go stay out for free or next to nothing, that
Speaker 1: are close to these hospitals, children's hospitals, so you can
Speaker 1: be near your kid and have to fly back and
Speaker 1: forth or you know, lose your job that kind of thing. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also, like we said, have been charged with globalization,
Speaker 1: and they will counter that. No, no, no. When we
Speaker 1: go to these countries, we have cultural specific menu items,
Speaker 1: and that's very true. There's we have I think an
Speaker 1: article about wacky McDonald's menu items from around the world,
Speaker 1: and uh, we actually try and incorporate the local culture
Speaker 1: into our menu instead of just forcing this American thing
Speaker 1: down their throat. That's what they say, right, And if
Speaker 1: you uh, there's a picture actually of a pair of
Speaker 1: um McDonald's workers in India. Um, and there's the Maharajah
Speaker 1: Mac and the vegetable burger with cheese, both of which
Speaker 1: I imagine are cooked without beef since in he is
Speaker 1: kind of big on the cow worship, right. I don't
Speaker 1: think that they that McDonald's wild go over very well
Speaker 1: if you walked into one and in Mumbai and hey,
Speaker 1: here's one of your gods right here on the menu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've taken beef off the men either. Right. So this
Speaker 1: is a perfect example of the good that McDonald's does. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's good. It's called glocalization. You're taking a multinational but
Speaker 1: um you know, very culturally specific company and adjusting it
Speaker 1: as needed locally. Colocalization is great. But the thing is
Speaker 1: is when it's so disingenuous when people put that point out,
Speaker 1: because of course McDonald's isn't going to serve hamburgers in
Speaker 1: India because they want to exactly. So, yeah, they're going
Speaker 1: to adjust their menu to reflect local values because without that,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna buy it, Josh, I know we're kind
Speaker 1: of short on time. There's some more stuff we gotta
Speaker 1: stick in here, though. Uh, we need to talk about
Speaker 1: the mcnoggan. Did you ever see that they fried a
Speaker 1: chicken head? What? Yeah, I'll show you a picture. This
Speaker 1: lady purportedly gotten her box of McDonald's chicken wings or
Speaker 1: fried chicken wing head and it. You know, it's exactly
Speaker 1: what it looks like, but it is. Snopes has said
Speaker 1: that it has not been verified and or disproven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta see it. It's really funny and uh so
Speaker 1: because she has refused to turn it over for inspection
Speaker 1: and so it's just kind of still floating out there.
Speaker 1: It was like ten years ago, so I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: gone away by now. Um. Did you ever hear the
Speaker 1: rumor about the cow's eyeballs? Yeah, in the shekes not
Speaker 1: true as far as we know. Uh. The My favorite
Speaker 1: McDonald's staying is um in Los Angeles. WO worked in
Speaker 1: the film business and we shoot most McDonald's commercials are
Speaker 1: shot at this one fake store in l A whole
Speaker 1: thing is on wheels, not literally the building, but everything
Speaker 1: in there's on wheels. It's got lights all rigged. It's
Speaker 1: all faults. And every day when you shoot there, they
Speaker 1: have four o'clock fries. A fourlock, the production stops and
Speaker 1: they bring out like fifty large fries for everyone to
Speaker 1: just chow dout on. So it is a functioning McDonald's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's not a functioning restaurant. But you
Speaker 1: gotta be able to fake the cooking and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. And you worked there, we need to tell
Speaker 1: that real quick. I worked there for an hour. I
Speaker 1: worked there for a few weeks. I worked there for
Speaker 1: one hour. I went in the training and in the basement,
Speaker 1: and they gave me my like, took my uniform size,
Speaker 1: showed me the little video, told me to clock in
Speaker 1: and out, and I was like, all right, you start
Speaker 1: in the morning at like four am. And the next
Speaker 1: morning I was in Athens and the alarm went off
Speaker 1: and I went, I can't do this. Yeah, good for you.
Speaker 1: Never went back, never catch my check. So I gotta
Speaker 1: check out there with my name on it. Oh, really,
Speaker 1: you should get that for like four or fifty or something.
Speaker 1: And Josh, we can not. We would be remiss if
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about some of our famous cohorts who
Speaker 1: have worked at McDonald's. Okay, and they are as follows
Speaker 1: A Chuck, Shania Twain, Sharon Stone. Yeah, ja the rat
Speaker 1: leno Really, I mean Cocoa's Corner, I mean Camp Cocoa.
Speaker 1: Pink and Pink had a quote, she says, quote, I
Speaker 1: would open the restaurant because I'd be tripping on acid,
Speaker 1: and I would say, could I have a bathroom duty?
Speaker 1: And I would sit in the bathroom and watch the tiles.
Speaker 1: So that's what Pink was doing. Carl lewis Olympian, Carl
Speaker 1: lewis cool. Macy Gray. If you had a funny voice
Speaker 1: taking your order at some point, it might have been
Speaker 1: Macy Gray. Where did she work? Does it say? Uh?
Speaker 1: I do not see where that was. No. Rachel McAdams,
Speaker 1: super smoking, cute actress, and d l hugely worked at
Speaker 1: McDonald's and they and we did, and they a lot
Speaker 1: of them still say that it was like a great
Speaker 1: job and it taught them order and cleanliness and all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. I I didn't get any of that
Speaker 1: from McDonald's. I worked there for an hour, so I
Speaker 1: can't really say I got a paycheck that was um,
Speaker 1: what was your station? Sixty I would do just about
Speaker 1: anything bathroom front. I don't remember. I never cooked anything,
Speaker 1: can never cook patties, but I make fries, put cheese on,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It was all over the place. They
Speaker 1: were superstar of the line. No, no, it was just
Speaker 1: like the guy was. I don't think he'd never met
Speaker 1: Ray Croc, the guy who managed that place. And there
Speaker 1: was a little too involved for like a late twenties
Speaker 1: guy with you know, the seventeen year old staff. He
Speaker 1: going like, you know, nothing, not to cast any dispersions
Speaker 1: or or suggest he was up to anything. I mean
Speaker 1: like he was just two on our level. You want
Speaker 1: to be your buddy. Yeah, you know. They say that
Speaker 1: one out of every eight people in the American workforce
Speaker 1: worked at McDonald's at one point. All butt and I
Speaker 1: think of their executives started out and their stores. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a million stats. We won't get into how
Speaker 1: many fries they sell, in the fact that the wraps
Speaker 1: around the earth a gazillion times every day or something
Speaker 1: ridiculous like that. There's so many stats. We got a
Speaker 1: lot of good McDonald's content on the website. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: finish this with two words, shamrock shake, boom. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: finish it with one word mc ribb. Nice Chuck. How
Speaker 1: we almost forgot that great Simpsons episode on in the
Speaker 1: crib too. If you want to know more about the Simpsons, McDonald's,
Speaker 1: the McRib the Shamrock, Shake deal Hugely, or Devo, you
Speaker 1: can type any of those things into the handy search
Speaker 1: bar how stuff works dot Com. I defy you to uh,
Speaker 1: since I said that, I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Do we have time for listener mail? No, we don't.
Speaker 1: Let's do this. Let's put out the call. Okay. We
Speaker 1: are coming to New York City folks in June, first
Speaker 1: week in June for Internet Week or is the second week?
Speaker 1: I think it's June. Yes, And we are looking to
Speaker 1: have a stuff you should know happy hour with the
Speaker 1: fans whoever wants to come, and we need some help
Speaker 1: on finding a place that will host this happy hour
Speaker 1: for free. Well yeah, we're just we just need a
Speaker 1: place that we can show up and be and let
Speaker 1: everybody know we're gonna be at. We don't need to
Speaker 1: rent it or anything. Well, preferably would be someone who
Speaker 1: would shut down except for us, and they will be guaranteed,
Speaker 1: probably a lot of people in there buying food and drinking.
Speaker 1: Year awesome, but so New York City fans. If you
Speaker 1: have any connections, please let us know. And we are
Speaker 1: actually looking for t shirt designs. Yeah, we're having a
Speaker 1: t shirt design contest. We're gonna select what the best
Speaker 1: three four. Maybe we haven't worked that out yet. All right,
Speaker 1: we haven't worked that part out everybody, but we are
Speaker 1: calling for t shirt designs. Look for activity on that
Speaker 1: on the Facebook fan page Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: and stuff you should Know podcast fit fan page on Facebook. Uh,
Speaker 1: and probably some tweets on it. We're gonna have a
Speaker 1: Twitter feed coming up soon. I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: like s Y s K maybe or something like that.
Speaker 1: We're getting with the times. Yeah, finally, I guess that's
Speaker 1: about it then, right, Chuck, If you have an email
Speaker 1: that you want to send to us, we'll get back
Speaker 1: to listen to your mail next week. Wrap it up,
Speaker 1: smack it on the bottom, Send it to Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
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