Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Who Was Ray Kroc?
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Ray Kroc was an American businessman who purchased the fast food company McDonald's in 1961 from the McDonald brothers and was its CEO from 1967 to 1973. Kroc is credited with the global expansion of McDonald's, turning it into the most successful fast food corporation in the world by revenue.
In this episode, Alex and Kelly explore Kroc and McDonald's, from the early days of standardization, to the menu, to the focus on marketing to kids, to how McDonald's stacks up in today's world. If you've ever stopped at the "Golden Arches", you probably wondered how McDonald's became synonymous with American fast food. In this "super sized" episode, we explore McDonald's and it's enigmatic founder, Raymond Albert Kroc.
If you like the content we are creating and would like to support it financially, check our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/DirtNapCityPodcast
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City, the show about interesting dead people. I'm here with my friend Kelly. How you doing, Kelly?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I'm doing well. I just had a little bit of a technology fail. You know, you were there, you saw it, but we got it all sorted, and so now I'm doing a lot better.
SPEAKER_02That's great to hear. Hey man, I got a good uh good app today lined up for you.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited. I'm excited. And and you know, uh everyone should just know Alex and I just spent a little time hanging out together, and all we did besides uh have a good time was strategize on this show because we said, what do our listeners want? I think they want more Alex and less Kelly. That was my theory. Is that what we decided?
SPEAKER_02No, I uh I think we uh we came to some good conclusions about what people want. We we disagree a little bit about what people want. True.
SPEAKER_01So so if you if you know what you want, email us at not at dirtnap city and just tell us what you want. That's that's all we really want to know is what do you want. But remember, we don't take requests. Yeah, no, we don't want to know what you want, we want to know what you want. It's different, right?
SPEAKER_02We don't want to know who you want us to talk about, we want to know what you want from us, but not not who you want to talk about. Hashtag goals, squad goals, squad goals, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what do you got going today, Alex? Tell tell me a little bit about this person.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, I've got a person today that um that uh is a little bit reminiscent of some of people we've done in the past, uh, actually has uh has a couple of parallels to people we've done in the past, uh like a big swirly signature. Not quite, not quite, but there's some several there's a couple of callbacks to things that we've talked about on previous episodes. So if you if this is your first time listening, you might want to start back with some of the back catalog. We started with Andre the Giant in season one and went on uh from there. What is this about?
SPEAKER_01Episode 21, I think.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow, wow, wow. Um, so yeah, there's this calls back to uh some of the previous episodes that we have. I'll I'll start with a little uh um not really a riddle, but uh a clue for you. Now, if you if you if you'd not we've alluded to this on previous episodes before, but uh we record a couple of these episodes in a day, and we don't know, obviously, we don't know who the other one has picked, and there's always this uh sense of nerves right about now where you're afraid that the other person picked the same person as you. Yeah, you guys will hear it as a future episode, but right now we're at the beginning of uh recording a couple different episodes. You know what? If it's the same episode, this just becomes a jumbo episode. No worries, Kelly. I don't want you to stress out about this.
SPEAKER_01No, I appreciate that. I'm I'm I'm uh excited about it. And you know, if we do the same person again, uh it's only happened once, right? And then we did one on purpose where we both did Saint Valentine. By the way, St. Valentine, you know, if you're a if you're a lover at heart, you want to check out that episode.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you've missed a holiday episode, it doesn't have to be that holiday to come and listen to it. Just um just go ahead and listen to it. Uh good date night uh episode listening. If you if you're on a date, just pop in those AirPods, listen to it together. It's it's a really romantic thing. The dulcet tones of uh Kelly and my voice. Dulcet. All right, so this person, um uh a male. Okay, wasn't a chef, but changed the way the people eat, first in the US, then around the world.
SPEAKER_01Um, was this uh Harvey Spork?
SPEAKER_02No, but future future episode on uh Harvey Spork. Look out for that one. I always thought that the spork was a combination of spoon and fork, but it turns out there was a Harvey Spork. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about maybe in an April Fool's episode or something.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. All right, all right, no. Um, all right, please continue.
SPEAKER_02By his name, you'd think we were gonna talk about Mario Batale or Steve Irwin, but we're not.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Uh I know who Steve Irwin is. I'm not sure who who is Mario Batale. Can you tell me that?
SPEAKER_02He's like a celebrity chef, but it's more about what he wears that where that clue is. Uh if you don't know him, if you don't know, you don't know.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, Steve Irwin wears a lot of Outback uh stuff.
SPEAKER_02So it has nothing to do with what Steve Irwin um wears, but more what he what he uh was into. Is it is it Anthony Bourdain? No, it is not. So okay uh there's a footwear that Mario Batali wore that was similar to what Steve Irwin liked to uh to uh hang out with.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay, Crocs. Crocs. Uh so if you would think it was because of Crocs, because of his name. Betty Crocker.
SPEAKER_02No, you know what? I was gonna do an episode on Betty Crocker. Turns out she wasn't a real person. Oh, well, there you go. I was I was really I had that one in my back pocket for a long time, and it turns out she wasn't real. No, today we're gonna talk about Ray Croc. Oh, yes, McDonald's. The Ray Crock, the uh not the original founder, but the one that uh drove uh McDonald's into Providence.
SPEAKER_01That's right, that's right. No, we'll talk about that. He was a subject of a movie. I did see that movie. What was that called?
SPEAKER_02Um, the movie starred uh Michael Keaton as him, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. And he had the Speedy System. It was uh did you ever see the movie? No, it was pretty good. It was pretty good. Uh yeah, no, I'm excited about that. I will say, kind of like Colonel Sanders, it's something that pretty much every American sees all the time. Um, and a lot of people out of the U.S. Um, if if you're not from the U.S. and you're listening, we are talking about the Golden Arches, McDonald's, Big Macs, quarter pounders. Um, either people in other countries either love America for it or they hate us for it, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but one thing, if you're from another country, there you know about it, right? That's kind of the symbol of America for a lot of people. It's it's the symbol of capitalism, of Western uh civilization. Definitely um um kind of on our on our ongoing theme of 20th century icons, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um love it. I didn't mention that he was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1902, died in San Diego in 1984.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, those those clues have no value whatsoever, as you pointed out to me. The what what don't those clues have no birth and birth and death, location and and time.
SPEAKER_02Although if you're a McDonald's historian, you might recognize the Oak Park, that's where their headquarters um still kind of remain. So near Chicago? Um yeah, yeah, it's a suburb of Chicago, and then the San Diego part, he was um, as we'll get to uh later, he uh owned the San Diego Padre baseball team at the end of his very much the a contemporary of of uh previous uh Dartnap City uh episode, uh Colonel Sanders. Very much kind of the the exact same time frame that we're did they ever meet? You know, I was looking for a picture of them together. I'm sure they met, but I did not find any uh picture of them. The closest I found was a picture of Dave Thomas, the Wendy's uh entrepreneur and Colonel Sanders together because Dave Thomas used to uh work at Wendy's, and there was a picture of him wearing the Colonel Sanders outfit. I mean, he worked at Colonel Sanders.
SPEAKER_01Wait, Dave Thomas worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken?
SPEAKER_02Right, he was a franchisee, and there's a picture of him wearing his Colonel Sanders uh costume next to Colonel Sanders. Nice, a younger Dave Thomas. Um let me tell you a little bit about Ray Croc. Because this guy's pretty, pretty interesting, and again, one of these 20th century American icon stories, but also like Colonel Sanders, didn't really um strike it big until you know midlife, so only enjoyed about 30 years of incredible wealth.
SPEAKER_01And by the way, before before you go too far, I do want to compliment you on the clue because I should have I really should have got the croc part, you know, the crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin. Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_02And Mario Batali is uh kind of a uh overweight celebrity chef with with long red hair who wears crocs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's famous for it.
SPEAKER_02If you know, you know, you know, yeah. So this guy was um born to uh Czech immigrant parents. Uh they were uh and his father actually uh was pretty rich, made a fortune, and lost it all during the stock market crash of 1929. So grew up and saw a little bit of the wealth, experienced that, but also experienced, you know, the kind of the downside of of capitalism and and and lived through the Great Depression. Now, here is a fact that is almost identical to someone else that we've talked about. Let's see if you remember. Um, I can I'm gonna say this little bullet point, and it's gonna hopefully uh you'll recall somebody else that I said almost the exact same thing. When World War I broke out, he lied about his age and went to war and became an ambulance driver at the age of 15, but the war ended right after he enlisted.
SPEAKER_01And he painted Ronald McDonald on the side of the ambulance, right? We're talking about Walt Disney.
SPEAKER_02It's amazing. That's the same story that uh Walt Disney had. Now, upon further review, here's something even more interesting is there's actually a whole Wikipedia page designed for ambulance drivers during World War One. Wow. It's amazing. All the notable people that were ambulance drivers and uh particularly artists, many artists, a lot of writers, like uh E. E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, people that were writers when World War I were going on. And the article I was reading said that it was probably due to the fact that, you know, they believed in the cause, but they either were too young to go into combat or they didn't want to uh take up arms, but they believed in the cause, so they wanted to do something. Men and women around that time, particularly creative, art artistic people, seemed to uh be uh uh gravitate towards being ambulance drivers around World. This is World War I'm talking about now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so we're talking about too, you had to really know how to drive because this wasn't an automatic uh you know 2017 vehicle. This was a uh a 1917 vehicle or 1905 vehicle that had uh probably tiny tires driving through mud and foxholes and rocks, you know. That was a probably a tough job. Yeah, and he was only 15. Wow.
SPEAKER_02So uh once the war ended, um, and then World War II came and went, um, he had different jobs, but ultimately became um milkshake mixer salesman for a company who wasn't doing well. In fact, this company was uh really uh kind of getting killed in the market share by uh Hamilton, uh Hamilton Beach. Is that the name of the mixer company that you always see on the prices right? So they were kind of a second-rate Hamilton Beach, but there was a particular restaurant in California that um bought a bunch of his mixers, and he became to know those guys pretty well, and those were the McDonald brothers. Because they made shakes. Richard and Maurice McDonald, that's right, that made shakes, and those guys started a uh McDonald's as a restaurant in 1940, later turned it into a hamburger stand, and was starting to franchise out in just the California area, just the Southern California area, actually. And they weren't really interested in going outside the California market. They said our hamburgers wouldn't really work in cold climates or wet climates or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01This needs to be nobody likes a hot burger when it's cold and wet outside.
SPEAKER_02They thought that maybe it was because it was an outdoor, it was a hamburger stand. So you kind of walk up there and order it. There was no drive-throughs back then. So this was kind of a thing that you would do outside, and they thought, well, if it's 20 degrees, what would somebody do at our hamburger stand? So true. They were trying to keep it kind of Southern California related. And this guy, being from Chicago, said, I'll tell you what, you give me the national franchise, anything outside of California and Arizona, I'll take it on, and I'll give you guys uh half a percent of all gross sales for every restaurant that I open from there. And for them, it was kind of easy money because they weren't going to expand it outside of California.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they had no plans to do that, and so this was just uh somebody else doing the work for them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so they were just making money while they slept, right? So in 1953, um, he uh he got the national franchise for McDonald's. So if you remember our Walt Disney episode, remember that uh as you mentioned, that he was also uh uh ambulance driver. Turns out those two guys were buddies, they met in ambulance training school over in France or Italy or wherever they were? Yeah, yeah, in Europe. So as soon as he becomes the national franchisee, he's reading in the papers that Walt Disney is is uh starting up this Disneyland, and he writes a letter to Walt and he says, uh, I have very recently taken over the national franchise of the McDonald's system. I would like to inquire if there may be an opportunity for a McDonald's in your Disney development. As the story goes, Walt wrote back and said, Okay, you can do that, but instead of charging 10 cents for your French fries, charge 15 and I'll take the other five cents. Um, so Ray said no to that, and um there was no McDonald's at at Disney. But I thought that was an interesting kind of intersection of two dirt knap city residents um ships passing in the night, right?
SPEAKER_01They're probably down there selling uh selling themselves some burgers and fries right now. Down there. It is dirt.
SPEAKER_02That's true. That's true. So when Ray Croc uh he uh he took over and and he had some very uh strict rules about the franchise system. Up to then, most franchises, and this was the ninth restaurant that he opened was in Illinois. So there was eight in California, and he decided that his first.
SPEAKER_01So it was his first owned by owned by the McDonald's brothers. Richard and Maurice owned eight, and then he opened the ninth in in uh Chicago area, Illinois.
SPEAKER_02Right, but his idea was instead of being having uh most franchises where you know you'd you'd get the the Southeast area or you'd get the whole Chicago area, he had an idea to make these guy uh franchise owners only own one single restaurant, and so they couldn't kind of take over the system, that he would still have a lot large control over the system, and because the biggest thing for him was uniformity in both quality and service, yeah. And if if if you start having people own take over, you know, 30, 40 restaurants, he loses a little bit of control. So by having them only take one restaurant at a time, um he he could standardize everything. The idea was to standardize everything so that the experience of every McDonald's would be the exact same everywhere. And I think to this day, that's what they're going for, right? That's that's the idea behind a lot of these fast food restaurants.
SPEAKER_01They're pretty close to it. I mean, I I drive across the country pretty regularly from here to New York, and we stop in a lot of McDonald's. The bathrooms are always adequate, the coffee's not bad. You know, it wasn't coffee, it wasn't something they originally really sold a lot of, but you know, I think they've grown their reputation for coffee and iced coffee uh smoothies, things like that. But it's just you kind of know what you're getting, right? That's that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_02You know what you're getting. And remember, this is in the early 1950s, as we talked about on the Colonel Sanders episode. When up to then, it's just a lot of mom and pop restaurants with varying opening and closing times and days. You don't know where the next restaurant's gonna be. There was there was uh uh remember Duncan Hines put out the book of all the restaurants to stop in, but it's really confusing if you're the bathroom clean. Yeah, but if you go to a McDonald's, like you said, you know what you're getting. And I think that holds to this day. That's what he was trying to achieve. But he also wanted to make it where people would know that they were uh there was almost a guarantee of quite quality. So if your order was wrong, you get a refund. Yeah, if you had to wait more than five minutes, you get a refund. Now think about how crazy that is. That back then you're talking about most restaurants were sit-down restaurants with waiters, wait service. You're waiting a lot more than five minutes, but this idea of fast food that food, you know, you're gonna get your food within five minutes or you get your money back. That's revolutionary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a hundred percent. And and was the term fast food common back then, do you know?
SPEAKER_02No, I think that term um might have come up in the in the 70s.
SPEAKER_01Um oh okay, after these places had already been established, and then we were like, what should we call that?
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah, and I think I think Burger King, Wendy's, Jack in the Box, uh, some of these early places, I think, in the once they were kind of everywhere ubiquitous, then then I think they they coined the term fast food. The other thing was he only allowed franchises in suburbs. He didn't let anybody build downtown restaurants. He was uh he was afraid that they would get robbed, or um that uh that there there would be um some sort of um you know uh bad elements, I guess, uh downtown now. Uh he also wanted them to be properly clean, like you mentioned, the people that work there to be well groomed and be polite to children. I think he realized early on that if you get the kids, the kids are often the ones on family trips to determine where y'all eat, right? That's right. And if you're nice to kids, um and that became a huge thing to um uh uh factor in McDonald's success, right?
SPEAKER_01Give them give them a nice friendly handshake. That's right, just like Dr. Spock.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Also, don't waste anything. Every condiment container is scraped completely clean before you you know use another uh and use anything else. Uh very efficient, and no cigarette machines, no pinball machines. So he didn't he wanted this to be a particular kind of place and he didn't want the wrong element to be riff ref sure. Um finally by 1961, so about 10 years into this thing, or eight years into this, he bought out the whole company from the McDonald's brothers for how much do you think that he he bought that for? I don't know how many restaurants.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna say in in 1951. 61. 61. Uh, I'm gonna say 2.5 million.
SPEAKER_02Very close. 2.7 million dollars, which and that number was um figured out to be the amount that after taxes, each of the brothers would walk away with a million bucks.
SPEAKER_01And and you know, that was a lot of money. That's a lot of money today. That was a lot of money back then, but not anything close to what they could have had.
SPEAKER_02No, by the time he died, there was 7,500 stores, $8 billion in sales, and he was worth $600 million. That was 20 years later. Wow. He died 20. It was 1961 when he bought it. He died in 1984.
SPEAKER_01So I wonder if either of the McDonald's brothers are still alive.
SPEAKER_02No, I doubt it, because they were older than him, I think. Okay. And he would be 120 now, so no, this is a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01But you you know, eating McDonald's definitely adds to your longevity.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, there's uh there's a lot of uh there was a movie about uh Supersize Me. Super Size Me, and that movie has not aged well. Um there's been a lot of claims um that um Morgan Spurlock. Morgan Spurlock, yeah. There's been a lot of claims that um he didn't just he did kind of things the shady way for sensationalism in the in the movie. Um he didn't reveal, for example, that he was an alcoholic, and so the damage done to his liver was most likely not done to by McDonald's foods. Um though there was a subsequent movie to that um that kind of did it a different way, and um the guy showed that with exercise his cholesterol actually went down, and he he uh stuck to a diet of 2,000 calories a day and he actually lost weight. But it was all McDonald's, it was all McDonald's, but showed that you know, most people I think the idea behind Super Size Me was that nobody knows this stuff's bad for you, and I just don't think that holds water. I mean, nobody eats at McDonald's every day, but if you did, you'd probably have a variety enough that um you would not, you know, just be a glutton. The idea was that McDonald's also that that he was addicted to it, but as soon as his 30 days. Day um uh movie was over, he was able to quit doing it. It wasn't so he wasn't really addicted to it.
SPEAKER_01It's funny because I I do remember watching that movie, and I do remember not not to play you know Monday morning quarterback, but I do remember thinking that some of it seemed kind of contrived. I remember a scene with him throwing up and being like, really? Just because you've eaten, you know, that that doesn't seem I don't know, that doesn't seem like unless it's just too much grease in your stomach or something like that. But um, but he did also, I think, Morgan Spurlock, didn't he have a whole series like uh like uh Netflix or HP?
SPEAKER_02I think it was actually on CNN. Oh yeah, but it was like an eight-part series where he did other kind of gonzo things like that, where he put himself and I actually enjoyed it. He's he's an interesting filmmaker. I just think there was a lot of sensationalist stuff that went along with that uh movie. The the rule that he had was he was never going to ask specifically for to get supersized, but if they asked, he always had to say yes. Yeah, of course that's their policy to always say, Would you want to supersized that? Now, interestingly enough, after that movie came out, they stopped offering supersize uh means. But you know, I think a lot of places today will ask you, do you want to upgrade that to a yeah large?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's more the that's more the way that like Chick-fil-A will ask. Would you like to upgrade, sir? Um am I gonna get a more comfortable seat or what?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's just more food shoved in your pie hole, basically, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's more more pie.
SPEAKER_02Now, when I talked about at the beginning about how this guy changed the way that we eat, I think it's hard for us to imagine what what it was like in the early 1950s or 1960s when these McDonald's were starting to uh to sprout up. But man, I mean, outside the home, eating outside the home used to be a treat that was only you know, you'd do once a month. Maybe if you had a little bit of money, you'd you'd go and you'd have a treat, maybe you'd go to Howard Johnson's or you'd go to the local um mom and pop restaurant, and um and it would be an event, you know, everybody would dress up. And this was, you know, you serve meals that kids liked served in less than five minutes. You the the real amazing thing, I think he trained Americans to bust their own tables. Oh, really? Think about that. That wasn't done before. Nobody ever would think of kind of like how you would never think of pumping your own gas until everybody did. Imagine training people, he would put these garbage cans that were kind of friendlyly labeled and had the swinging door and plastic trays and tell people, hey, on your way out, why don't you throw your stuff away? And then they could save on, you know, um maintenance people. Yeah, and all they have to um now they'd still have people come and wipe up the the tables, but think of basically training people to now that's kind of our default. You know, we're kind of spoiled if somebody comes and cleans our you say, Oh, uh um barbecue places are notorious. Like, I do I leave my stuff here, or you kind of don't know, and then you kind of walk around and see what other people are doing. But our default is to kind of look for a place to throw out our own food, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. And and that wasn't a common thing, I guess, anywhere before that.
SPEAKER_02Not only that, but the idea of dining in versus takeout. There was no real such thing as takeout food. Um, I think maybe Chinese restaurants, you know, started that with the the the doggy bag, you know, little white box. But no place else would you take out your food. And what they would do is they would ask you, is this dine in or take out? I mean, I'm I'm talking to you as if you've never been to a fast food restaurant, but that was so unique and foreign to people at the time. And if it was dine in, they'd give you a little tray, and if it was takeout, they'd put it in a bag. Then drive-thru, the idea of drive-thru came in much later. I think Jack in the Box might have started the drive-thru restaurant with the clown's mouth.
SPEAKER_01There were a lot of like drive-in restaurants like Sonic, right? That sure and wasn't even Whataburger, I think, was had had a lot of drive-in, had had like kind of those stations. I'm trying to think what another one besides.
SPEAKER_02In Houston, in Houston, they had Prince's hamburgers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and wasn't Dan's and Franz, didn't they have like a little drive drive-in here in Austin?
SPEAKER_02I'm sure every little city had their own version of that, but you don't drive away with the food.
SPEAKER_01You just yeah, you sit there and eat it in your car. Yeah. Which is a weird thing to me. It's like I I I that feels like the worst of both worlds, right? Yes. It's like, okay, I'm not gonna save any time and I'm not gonna be able to eat at home, but I'm also not going to get the food fast, and I'm also not go, and I'm also gonna make a mess in my car. And my car is gonna smell like French fries.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree with you.
SPEAKER_01I have to tell you a quick funny story about about Sonic. Uh, when my daughter was probably three years old, four years old, um, she ate a bunch of tater tots at Sonic. And you know that Sonic tater tots are delicious, right? Um you're nodding your head, but nobody can see that. Yes. Yes, they're delicious. Thank you. Uh so she ate, you know, way too many tater tots, and guess what happened? She threw up. You know, talking about too much grease in your stomach all of a sudden, and she's throwing it up. And so I think that happened one time. And then we go back to Sonic, and she's in the backseat of the car, and there's a kid next door eating tater tots, and she gives the kid the roll, you know, she rolls down the window and gives the kid the roll down the window, and says, Don't eat too many, they'll make you puke.
SPEAKER_02Was she ever allowed back at Sonic again?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, I think her thing there now is just the the um not frosties and blizzards, what do they call them? Like the Route 66, you know, the the cherry lime slushies and that sort of thing. Like I don't think she I think she only does sweet at Sonic now. She doesn't do she doesn't do savory anymore.
SPEAKER_02What's interesting that you mentioned Sonic because we live here in Texas, and if you don't have Sonic in your part of the country, uh in a lot of small towns in Texas, Sonic is the place to kind of go and gather after you know high school football games and big events. Like Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen, in other parts of the country. Um McDonald's is like that in a lot of places. That most small towns have a McDonald's, and in a lot of places, McDonald's is the place to gather. Which I you know, when you think of a McDonald's as being this enormous corporation and kind of the behemoth that's that symbolizes capitalism, what what the company emphasizes to its franchise to this day is that in your little town, McDonald's is the small town restaurant, it is the mom and pop place. And that going back to the kind of single franchise owner, and I'm not sure that that's still the case. I think you can buy a few now. But the idea in the DNA of McDonald's is still very much like you're the small town restaurant in your little town. It just so happens that everybody know already knows all the food, it already has name recognition and instant kind of credibility to the extent that they know it what it what they're gonna get, right? Yeah, yeah. But that idea of McDonald's being part of the community and being being there for after the high school football game or the band concert or whatever, that is the case throughout America.
SPEAKER_01Well, and I gotta say, you're you're absolutely right, but I gotta tell you, I don't think it's just because of their philosophy and the fact that they train their uh franchisees to do that. It's their advertising, right? I mean, they're advertising every commercial you see is the happy family, you know, after the football game, you know, exactly what you're talking about. The sports kids after the baseball game, and we lost, but we're going to McDonald's. Yeah, you know, it's it's very much the way they position themselves over the years. And I agree with you. Um, I have a funny story too. This is a really quick one. My grandfather ran his own business in Kansas for a long time. And then when he retired, he uh they originally moved to Florida, but they decided they wanted more, they wanted four seasons again. So they moved to North Carolina, this little town called Black Mountain. And when we would go to visit, he called McDonald's the office. He said, Honey, I'm going to the office. And he would go down there and just drink coffee and eat, you know, whatever, whatever he was having. And he would take people down there, he would meet people down there. He was always kind of this wheeler dealer, entrepreneur kind of guy, like to sell stuff at flea, you know, buy stuff at flea markets and sell it. You know, he would have loved eBay, but but McDonald's was the office. And so I remember him saying, uh, Kelly, we're going to the office, and you'd take me down to McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's great. That's great. Did you feel a certain like uh um special place in your heart for McDonald's because of that?
SPEAKER_01Uh I mean, I'll I'll say my my parents, we we very much frequented McDonald's when I was a kid, so I already kind of did. You know, it was it was it was very much like you said, it was something we could all agree on. Um, it was cheap, it was fast. There was one right near our house. I definitely feel like that story with my grandfather. Um, I thought it was funny that he named it the office, you know, and everybody knew what he was talking about. But um, I already had an affinity for it. I think in later years, I've tried to resist it. Like I try not to go there because it is so it is such um, I think kind of high calorie, low uh nutrition food compared to other foods. And it is such a big corporation, it's not supporting local things, you know, whatever, all the reasons you might not go to McDonald's. But I still find myself on a road trip stopping there because you know what you're getting, just like you said.
SPEAKER_02So about 15 years ago, man, was it that long ago? Maybe, yeah, but maybe, yeah, about 15 years ago, I had the occasion to visit Hamburger University.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've heard of this place. Yeah, yeah. It's where the franchisees go to learn the ways of McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02It's a pretty amazing it's place. Um it's it was in um um uh Illinois. It was in uh, I believe it's still in Oak Park, Illinois. Now it's moved to um now they are in downtown Chicago where Oprah's offices actually were. They've converted that. But it's basically the training facility, yeah, for McDonald's. Um it's it's mostly man, well, it's managerial training, executive training. Um it's pretty amazing place, and I got to spend the entire day there kind of walking around and and um I'll tell you what, by the I'm not a big McDonald's person, but by the end, where they told us at the end of the day they were gonna bring us a McDonald's, they were gonna give us a hamburger, I was so excited, and I could the all day I kept thinking, maybe I've misjudged this thing this whole time, because it must be important if they have. I mean, Kelly, they have rooms there, they have training rooms that are like the United Nations where people have different headsets and they have 25 different languages that they can teach, and they have translators behind glass translating these seminars, and you think, well, this has to be more important than just a hamburger. But alas, at the end of the day, I tasted it and it was just a simple McDonald's hamburger.
SPEAKER_01So so let me ask you this. Um, what is your favorite thing to order at a McDonald's? Like if you if you were stopping and could just get one thing, what would it be?
SPEAKER_02That might have been the last time I was at a McDonald's was that at hamburger.
SPEAKER_01I just don't usually go there, but I suppose if I went not even not even like road trips between Dallas or Austin and Houston, or where where do you stop between Austin and Houston? Bucky's?
SPEAKER_02Um sure. Uh uh Prosicks.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just not a big McDonald's person. Um I I I don't know. If I if I went there, I would probably do they have some kind of a chicken uh sandwich. I'd probably get something like that.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_01What are you laughing at, Kelly? Just the cavalierness in the way you say that. Do you have some kind of a chicken sandwich?
SPEAKER_02This is not being being elite, it's just I don't care for McDonald's that much. Now, McDonald's, if you're listening, uh we'd be happy to sponsor, we'd be happy to take your sponsorship money because obviously Kelly calls it the office.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, my whole family.
SPEAKER_02He'll do the reads if you want to sponsor our uh show.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, if if you were to ask me the same question, you're begging me to ask you this question, aren't you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, if I I might try a McDLT if they still had those, because those are fascinating. And and at before you give me your answer, let me just tell you that when you go to Hamburger University, there is a portion of that museum that's like uh at that place that's like a museum, and they have all these artifacts, and they have like the original packaging of the McDLT, and they have like the wasn't it the hot side hot and the cold side cold? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a whole thing, right? And then they had like the history of the McRib and all this. You would you would love this museum. They have like a whole wall of of all the happy meal toys that they've ever had. It's really a quite, quite uh astounding place. Let me ask you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what's your question? What's your go?
SPEAKER_02What's your go-to order?
SPEAKER_01Oh, great question, Alex. Um, well, I was gonna tell you that my go-to order is the quarter pounder with cheese. And I have a vision of what it tastes like. I have a memory of what it tastes like, and every once in a while I get one that that meets that memory, like just kicks off the right, you know, chemicals in my brain and dopamine. And I'm just like, yeah, that's good. Um, you know, the the beef is really hot and pretty ju juicy, the lettuce is you know crispy, the pickles are pickly, you know, it's got the right amount of sauce on it. I'd say 80% of the time they miss the mark. 80% of the time I'm disappointed in the quarter pounder with cheese. But but that that 20% when it's right, it's it's so good.
SPEAKER_02So that's interesting because that's their philosophy is that standardization. So you're saying you're falling short.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's like the bread is a little stale or the meat's cold or the the lettuce isn't crispy. I mean, there's there's always something. I say 80% of the time, there's something that is falling short. So McDonald's, if you're listening, get it together, man. Try to get it together. Then then I also I do want to compliment them, though. Their iced coffee is really good, especially if you don't over-sweeten it, because they do oversweeten it. They serve it super sweet, but you have to tell them that you don't want it as sweet, and they'll do that. And then they do have um McDonald's now has smoothies. And their smoothies, I don't know how full of sugar they are. I don't know how nutritious they are, if they're you know, like a legit healthy smoothie, or if they're just like basically um, you know, a milkshake. Um, yeah, they're they're good though. They're good, and you don't feel quite as guilty uh drinking one of those as you do drinking a milkshake.
SPEAKER_02You talk about the quarter pounder with cheese. Um, they did develop a bigger burger than that called the third pounder, and people didn't buy it because people thought this is kind of embarrassing, but Americans thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter pounder.
SPEAKER_01And they're charging more money for yeah. Well, well, you know, you can get like a double quarter pounder, you know. I mean, you can get like a triple. I think isn't there a triple?
SPEAKER_02Is that if you if you teach fractions out there, uh get your act together, Americans. That's really sad state. So it we didn't sell because people they would ask people uh as they were leaving the store, why didn't you buy the third of pound? And they go, Why would I pay more for less for a smaller hamburger? Yeah, and people didn't know that a third of a pound was more than more meat than a quarter pound. It's a sad thing. Uh, I was speaking with uh uh about McDonald's uh um about my trip to quarter uh hamburger university and uh to a colleague.
SPEAKER_01Can I ask why? Why did you why did you go to hamburger university?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was on a a work, um, it was at a conference, and uh at a lot of our conferences we take uh these trips to organizations that are uh in the area, and it was a conference in Chicago.
SPEAKER_01So you weren't that you weren't buying a franchise or no, no, no. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I was at another conference and I was telling this this colleague of mine who was Portuguese, um, and uh she had never been to the U.S. Uh we were in Germany at the time, and I was telling her about my trip, and she said, Oh, the the secret to McDonald's is they they get the kids hooked, you know, and that was yeah, just what we were just talking about. And she said, she said, I don't know what they put in that soup, but my kids go crazy for the soup. Soup. Apparently, in Portugal, the soup at McDonald's is like crack, they say for kids. Love the wow. Um, so it's really funny that they've figured out these little regional things that kids like in other places and they're like a royal place on that, too. In Indonesia, they have McRice. In New Zealand, they have meat pies. Uh, in Greece, their hamburgers have tziki sauce and they're served in pita. You know, just little things like that. Now, as we talked about in the Colonel Sanders episode, there's a fine line, and actually in Walt Disney episode, too, there's a fine line between you know somebody coming to McDonald's and wanting a taste of America versus giving them something that they're comfortable with. It's probably like American Chinese food, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh it has to be something that they're gonna buy, but think that they're getting a taste of America. Uh, in a lot of European countries, um, they serve beer at McDonald's. I don't know if you've ever been to McDonald's in Germany, but they've beer. Yep, I have seen that. Today there's over 40,000 McDonald's, uh, and only a third of them are in the United States. Wow. Okay. Do you know which country has the second most McDonald's restaurants? Uh, I mean, uh, I would think Canada, but it's actually Japan, and then China is number three. Isn't that crazy? But Japan's tiny. Yeah, I know. I know. Isn't that crazy? They have uh like uh 20,000 um McDonald's in Japan or something crazy like that, or you know, there's that would be like a McDonald's every every 10 feet, you know.
SPEAKER_01I mean, like you remember do you remember um we were talking about it?
SPEAKER_02Don't fact check me, Kelly.
SPEAKER_01We were talking about um we were talking about best in show, and I don't know if you remember the scene where uh they met at the McDonald's, or they met sorry, we were talking about best in show, and they were talk talking about how they met at the Starbucks, uh, but it was across the street from another Starbucks, and she had gone to the wrong Starbucks.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. They actually have that in in Houston. They have a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.
SPEAKER_01Oh goodness.
SPEAKER_02Um people estimate that one of one out of every eight workers in the U.S. have worked at McDonald's at some point, which is really interesting because you figure that that a lot of people when they're their first job is at McDonald's, so it kind of sets the stage for what a workplace should be, what people should expect. A lot of these, you know, managers are 18, 19 years old and they're the first boss that people ever have. One out of every eight workers have worked, and if you figure, if you factor in all the other fast food places, there's a huge percentage who get their first job at one of these places. I did want to mention, since we were talking about Germany, that in Hamburg, Germany, there's actually a McBoat where you can they have a float-through service instead of drive-thru where you could drive your boat through and get get through. It's the only one in the world.
SPEAKER_01It's a McDonald's?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's called McBoat. Okay, but it's uh it's a McDonald's, it's a McDonald's, and they have a float-through service where you're a McBoat. Wow. You can only get there. I don't know if you can go inside.
SPEAKER_01I think you can see it in Germany, you know, you know, in in Hamburg, you know, the people that live there, they're called hamburgers. Right. Which, you know.
SPEAKER_02It's perfect. Right. Back to so maybe there is a hamburger university there, right?
SPEAKER_01So you you mentioned one in eight uh American workers had worked at McDonald's. Um, my wife worked at McDonald's.
SPEAKER_02Oh, great, great. Um, how for how long?
SPEAKER_01I mean, she was a she was a teenager. This was in the Dallas area. Um, I don't know, a year or two. Um should we get her in here?
SPEAKER_02No, sure. Uh now I remember when I was younger, I remember people complaining about the McDonald's cash registers just had pictures of food on them. They didn't even have words, and people would just press those, and they were complaining that the workers today are never gonna know how to make change. It's kind of like the chat GPT discussions we're having now. They you know, thinking that making things easier makes people you know lazier or dumminess down. Sure, sure, sure. But I don't think that was that bad of a technology, probably. I mean, it got things done, it got things faster, and you know, it it probably cut down on the air, and the ideal. Was if the order got messed up, they had they got their money back. So it was really important that that stuff was taken care of. Um at this McDonald's university, I want to stress how international this place was. I mean, um, there they had people from 119 countries, and they're teaching things, you know, not just about the organizational values and history and technical expertise. I mean, you could have a whole class on the architecture of a hamburger, but you would also have classes on leadership skills. Um, so it was and and the ability they had the ability to teach in 28 different languages through the, you know, like I said, like the United Nations type of headphone system. Um there's been over a quarter million graduates of Hamburger University. They say it's actually more selective than Harvard. Harvard's acceptance rate is um 7%, and McDonald's University is uh less than 1%. So it's harder to get into. And they even call their instructors faculty. Um it has a very college feel to it.
SPEAKER_01You could potentially get a job at hamburger university someday. Me. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Faculty. Tenured, or uh as they call it, the deep-fried faculty.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Now back to our uh hero of the story, Ray Croc. Um, you know, he was just kind of printing money. The the way that McDonald's headquarters made money is they owned all the land that anytime a store was bought, McDonald's would own the land. So they were just getting tons of uh tons of money from these uh Fran they could franchise.
SPEAKER_01They own the land or the actual building as well.
SPEAKER_02Um, I'm not sure about that. I know that it was they were very much uh, you know, uh they became a landlord. Landlord company, right? Yeah. Um so he was just raking in and like I said, you know, if you you figure he was really starting in 19 in the early 60s with the big um push. Um, you know, he retired in 1973. So, you know, he had 10 to 20 years of this. Uh uh 1973 retired, and he bought the uh San Diego Padres baseball team for 12 million dollars, which um nowadays baseball teams go for um you know like a billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um uh but the fans loved him. He was just a he was just another fan, um, kind of plucked. It wasn't some, you know, uh a rich oligarch. He was just a fan like the rest of them. In fact, they lost to the Astros in 1974, and he went to the PA system and said, I've never seen such stupid ball playing in my life. And the crowd went crazy, they got on his sign. I'm sure the players hated it, but the crowd loved it. But he kept getting fined by the commissioner for things like tampering and things like that. So he handed over the operations to his son-in-law in 1979. He said, There's more future in hamburgers than baseball. Um, died five years later, but the year that he died, he died in the summertime, and that year the Padres went to the World Series. Oh, wow. Um, one of only two times they've ever been in the World Series. So um, I remember they played my uh favorite team, um, the Detroit Tigers that year, and they the all the Padres had uh his initials on their on their sleeves, R-A-K uh for uh Ray Kroc. So um, but you know, the the legacy that this guy leaves, uh, much like Colonel Sanders, is immense. Um maybe the name isn't there, maybe the name recognition people don't necessarily know the uh the name Ray Kroc.
SPEAKER_01I think I think in the business world he's pretty well known and respected, right? You know, as an entrepreneur and a a founder. But yeah, I he I I'm trying to think if Dave Thomas or Ray Kroc. I feel like Ray Kroc still has an edge. And and then Colonel Sanders, though, Colonel Sanders was in the commercials, that's why he's the most and he's still the face, like he's still the logo.
SPEAKER_02Ray Kroc never changed the name. Dave Thomas did commercials. I don't know if Ray Kroc ever did just he was just the money man, you know? Yeah, and um, but the legacy he leaves isn't just a bunch of McDonald's, it's like I said, he changed the way we do things, and even if you're a hater of McDonald's, or even if you prefer different fast food places, there's undeniable that they're the king of fast food.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Worldwide.
SPEAKER_01Well, can we talk about the characters?
SPEAKER_02Oh, the uh yeah, yeah, let's talk about the characters. So, um, again, to appeal to children, um, they invented um now the original logo for like when the McDonald brothers uh had it was just uh like a chef's hat um on top of a hamburger. Pretty boring. Um, but then this guy came in in the um, I don't know when the characters came in. I'm guessing by the way they looked, it came in the 60s. Yeah, they they had a very psychedelic looking, yep, yeah, very colorful. But let's see, you had Ronald McDonald, you had um who was you know just the nice, lovable, and still to this day at every Walmart where I think there's a McDonald's inside every Walmart, there's a Ronald McDonald like statue sitting on the street. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Kind of kind of a silver or a very high polished plastic kind of look.
SPEAKER_02Right. Right. Um, then you had um Mayor McCheese. Mayor McCheese, yes. Mayor McCheese was uh kind of a uh a hamburger or cheese burger wearing wearing a tuxedo, right? Or uh a suit um that was kind of I guess the boss of everything. Um then you had uh Grimace. Grimace, he was purple. Grimace is purple and almost like a uh um a big block, kind of a Barney kind of a knockoff. Um but but I he was around first, I think.
SPEAKER_01Um Grimace was around before Barney.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh definitely, definitely. Um who else? Who what other characters? Hamburglers. Oh, hamburger. Now, what was his deal? He went around and he was he wore like he had just gotten broken out of jail. He wore um striped, uh striped uh like a prison uniform and um a mask and uh like a hat, right? Yeah, I don't know what the deal was with him. Like he would go around stealing people's hamburgers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And then the uh there was a cop character, um Officer Big Mac. Officer Big Mac, that's right.
SPEAKER_02He looked just like um Mayor McCheese, but he was a cop. Right, and um, yeah, and then he wore a little hat on top of it uh on top of his big giant head. But he was the one who had to chase the hamburglar all the time. What about Captain Crook? Captain Crook? So Captain Crook was just like hamburger, except he only stole filet of fish.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. He was into fish because he was a captain. Oh man. I just actually Googled um Grimace, uh Grimace uh and Barney, and then apparently there's a Grimace versus Barney deathmatch video. Of course there is.
SPEAKER_02Of course there is.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to see that. I'm gonna watch a death battle, it says. Uh yeah, and looking at the two, they were very similar. Grimace was Grimace was um more cone-shaped, and Barney was more had a big dinosaur head, whereas Grimace's head just kind of went to a point.
SPEAKER_02Do you think those characters still exist today? Like, do people know Grimace? You think if you showed somebody from a young person today, Grimace, they would know they would at least identify it with McDonald's?
SPEAKER_01I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you have to you have to be of a certain age and generation to know who Grimace is. They're gonna know who Barney is because they're Barney was kind of around when we were a little bit older, but they're not gonna know who Grimace is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'm I'm reading about Grimace here, and it says that he was officially first called Evil Grimace, and he was just two arms that stole milkshakes, and then they they dropped the evil part, and he was introduced as one of the good guys.
SPEAKER_01He was he was sued by that Knieval guy. You can't be evil Grimace. Sorry, buddy.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I guess he was just like a mascot, huh?
SPEAKER_01And why was there always a fascination with stealing things? You know, stealing the filet of fish, stealing the hamburgers. I mean, hamburglar, that okay, that that's clever, right? But but Captain Crook, well, that's clever too, actually.
SPEAKER_02Do you think the idea was to get kids to order more than one burger so in case the one of them got stolen?
SPEAKER_01I think the idea was to teach morality to kids through through um processed food. Yeah, you're probably right. Ultimately it came down to these people were pioneers in this marketing the kids thing. So none of this stuff would fly today. I mean, it's all kind of you know schlocky and cheesy and uh excuse my excuse my pun there, but but it it was at the time probably pretty innovative. I mean, nobody likes clowns, right? Who who actually likes clowns? But but at the time, again, hey, we want kids. It's like I think I think Ronald McDonald is a little bit of who Krusty the Clown is making fun of, right? You know, or or Bozo and all those people, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02But I think Ronald McDonald would still be recognizable now. I mean, yeah, they don't make any commercials with him. Maybe it's because he's at Walmart, but I don't know how, but I feel like people still know who Ronald McDonald is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's all the other characters though that got sort of pushed to the back and to the side. I mean, you don't ever see, as a matter of fact, I remember the Happy Meals back in the day, they would always have characters in them.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, right, right, right. Like, yeah, they were IP for that for sure. Yeah. Um, I'm reading about Ronald's uh, and I never noticed this until I just read this, but you probably did since you're more of a McDonald's guy. Ronald's suit had French fry bags for pockets with two large ones around the lower body and an average-size French fry bag on the heart.
SPEAKER_01Huh. No, I I that that isn't something that I knew or recognized.
SPEAKER_02So they probably did that so people would order more French fries and put some in their pocket.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Like and there wasn't a French fry thief specifically, right? That would be you. Yeah, okay. I'm I'm the French fry thief. Look out.
SPEAKER_02You know, the the the basic thing is they're manipulating uh kids to just order more junk food, right?
SPEAKER_01Uh and and they're manipulating the parents, right? You know, ultimately if little Johnny melts down and and throws a fit, then you're more likely to say, okay, okay, we'll go to McDonald's. It's fine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's crazy to think that in every country they do this, and even if they don't like hamburgers, they're doing it with soup or McRice or whatever it is that the kids love. Uh, they're they're talking directly to these kids, and and then the kids are the ones deciding where to go uh uh for the for the meal. It's it's really amazing, and I think it still endures. So um, so good on you, Ray Crock. Uh, you created a uh a culture that we'll never we can never get rid of now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I I do want to talk about one other thing though. Uh you you mentioned about um actually I have two other two other topics for this. One, you mentioned about the um the hamburger university being hard to get into. I think that the management at McDonald's is actually very well trained, right? I mean, it's a it's a huge business. You're you're managing millions and millions of dollars worth of revenue every year and and operations and logistics and supply chain and a whole bunch of stuff. So it's one of these things where I feel like they really invest in their managers, but they probably don't really invest in their uh, you know, kind of frontline workers as much.
SPEAKER_02Sure, because they're so transient, right? They only last, the people are only there for but their ultimate goal is they love for people to work there, you know, for you know, when as their first job, advanced through kind of assistant manager, manager, and they love for those people to become future owners and operators. That's their dream.
SPEAKER_01They like that story.
SPEAKER_02They love that story, particularly uh for um minority workers. They love that story that they they're given opportunity to you start off here at 16 years old, and one day you're gonna be able to buy a McDonald's and set yourself up because I think you can make pretty good money as a owner.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. As an owner, I think even as a manager, you can make six figures.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it's very uh deliberate what they're what they're trying to do. And and like you say, they they have a certain way to teach the executive skills. Now, you know, as far as the turnover of a of a place like that, I I don't think it can be very easy. I think a company like Chick-fil-A does a really good job keeping its people. You see a lot of 20-year-old, 21-year-old kids there that have been there for four or five years that are working their way up. They've figured out a way to kind of keep those those people around too. But yeah, that's a tough industry. Get a lot of turnover.
SPEAKER_01It's it's all about it's all about culture too, right? They're they're trying to um create a culture. But but yeah, it's especially in today's age, now that we have um so many other opportunities, and so now that we have so many other um uh competitors out there, I I know finding finding people in that industry right now is very difficult, don't you think?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's a it's a tough and you know, if you can get somebody for a whole season, you know, like a summer or uh Christmas break, you're you're doing fine just constant turnover. But some companies do that better than others, you know. I mean, there are some um, you know, they make it look easy, I guess is what I'm saying. You should go to some fast food places and um forget about what the food tastes like. The operations are a disaster, right? And that is uniform. There's some places that no matter where you go, it's always a mess, right?
SPEAKER_01And and there's some that do it really well, right? If you're looking at uh Chick-fil-A, I think generally you have a good experience. Everybody's very polite. It's my pleasure, sure. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so I want to play something for you here, real quick.
SPEAKER_02Um is it uh uh the um baseball drop again?
SPEAKER_01No, no. It's something my daughter, she's she's gonna be a recurring theme on this. It's something that she uh recorded um many years ago in in second grade. She was asked to do a persuasive speech. And you could either talk for something or against something. And we still have we still have it. It was an audio file. Okay, here we go. Can you hear this?
SPEAKER_00Mick disgusting. If you're ever at 183 and Breaker Lane, you're at the wrong place because there sits the worst restaurant in all of Austin. Don't go to McDonald's. Trust me, it's the worst place you could ever go. They serve the French fries cold and they're way too salty. I love French fries, but not the ones at McDonald's. And the hamburgers come with onions on a kid's meal. Who likes onions? The toys break real easily, and they're plastic. They also seem like they are for little kids. They aren't really fun to play with either. If you want to go to a filthy, disgusting, dirty, careless restaurant that has cockroaches crawling everywhere, go to make disgusting, but I promise you won't like it.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's great. What a great review. That's one of the best Yelp reviews I've ever heard. One star. Zero. Zero very persuasive, very persuasive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was second grade. That was my my daughter's second grade persuasive argument.
SPEAKER_02Now, I'm guessing you have been to that McDonald's since.
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02Um didn't persuade.
SPEAKER_01Cockroaches everywhere.
SPEAKER_02Because it's the office, right?
SPEAKER_01Um, it's funny because actually it's 183 in Breaker Lane. Uh, that's probably one. I probably have been to been to McDonald's in like in Columbus, Ohio, more often than I've been to that one. Because again, it's it's a roadshow thing or a road trip thing, or in Oklahoma. You know, we're driving through Oklahoma or Missouri on the way up to New York. We stop at McDonald's. And it's usually to go to the bathroom to stretch our legs and to get a cup of coffee and sometimes like some French fries.
SPEAKER_02But so I'd probably hit a Brahms in that part of the country.
SPEAKER_01Oh, nice. Yeah, we do we do stop at Brahms as well. You can get some ice cream there, some good ice cream. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's awesome. Uh, I I feel like I learned a lot about Mr. Croc. And again, uh, nice, nice on the clue with uh Steve Irwin. If I only known who the other guy was, but I'll know next time. Croc, Crocodile Hunter, Crocs, Ray Croc.
SPEAKER_02There's no next time. That was it.
SPEAKER_01Next time we do an episode about Ray Croc.
SPEAKER_02You missed your chance.
SPEAKER_01All right, man. Very much in line with uh with with uh the 20th century and everything else about it.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you, Kelly, and thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of Dirt Knapp City. And uh go out and get yourself uh some uh wheezy flies.
SPEAKER_01We see flies, everyone. Take care, bye-bye.
