Word: mcdonald
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Careers Abandoned. Oddly, in a chain with McDonald's passion for standardization, licensees get neither food nor supplies from Oak Brook. Restaurants buy their own, mostly through regional cooperatives, though naturally the purchases must meet rigid headquarters specifications. The basic hamburger patty must be a machine-cut, 1.6-oz. chunk of "pure" beef - that is, no lungs, hearts, cereal, soybeans or other filler - with no more than 19% fat content, v. 30% for some competing ham burgers. The 3½-in.-wide bun must have a higher-than-normal sugar content for faster browning...
...McDonald's outlets have enough massed buying power - they purchase 1% of all the beef wholesaled in the nation - to line up steady supplies at stable prices in all normal times, and Oak Brook will help out in a pinch. Headquarters executives are currently buying up live steers with "contributions" levied on licensees, who get the meat back in the form of patties. McDonald's chiefs figure that they have corralled enough steers to get the company through the current beef shortage and avoid a price boost when the ceiling comes off retail beef prices this week...
...return for their money and submission to headquarters, the licensees get to use the McDonald's real estate, name and formula. For most, that is close to a license to print money. The average outlet grossed $508,000 last year, earning its operator upwards of $70,000 before taxes. For that reason, McDonald's receives thousands of license applications a year and accepts only about 10% of them. The company gives preference to existing licensees, but values business or professional experience of any kind. Every year large numbers of executives, doctors and lawyers abandon their careers to take...
...Rodrick, 48, practiced law in Chicago for two decades before he invested in a McDonald's outlet in 1967. "I became so fascinated with it that I began spending more time at McDonald's than with my law practice," he says. "Finally, my law partner suggested that I spend full time at one place or the other. I chose McDonald's and I have never regretted it." Four years ago, Rodrick moved to Florida and opened four outlets. Today he works seven days a week behind the counter and earns "a million dollars in happiness...
Young employees at McDonald's are not munificently rewarded. Most make little more than the minimum wage of $ 1.60 an hour. The Nixon Administration last spring proposed raising the hourly minimum to $2.20 in 1975 but partially exempting students who work part time, a category that covers most of the McDonald's work force. Washington skeptics, who note that Kroc openly gave $250,000 to the Nixon campaign last year, dubbed the measure "the McDonald's bill." Congress accepted the special student provision but Nixon last week vetoed the minimum wage bill as inflationary...