Show Notes
Politics and McDonald’s There is a delightful amount of “Elect Mayor McCheese” fan created imagery, which is a wonderful escape from the brutal reality of the US Presidential Election. But never before has McDonald’s played such a role in politics, and so today we explore some context about what the heck is happening. Why Are We Covering Politics?! Donald Trump is purportedly scheduled to work the fry station at McDonald’s in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 19th. Trump can’t stop obsessing over Harris’s McDonald’s job. So now he’s off to work the fryer at the fast food joint. We think this is perhaps more than just a publicity stunt and the subtext here is nothing less than the essential difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris & McDonald’s In November of 2012 the New York Times reported, With Day of Protests, Fast-Food Workers Seek More Pay: The biggest wave of job actions in the history of America’s fast-food industry began at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday at a McDonald’s at Madison Avenue and 40th Street, with several dozen protesters chanting: “Hey, hey, what do you say? We demand fair pay.” The unionization drive, called Fast Food Forward, is sponsored by community and civil rights groups — including New York Communities for Change, United NY.org and the Black Institute — as well as the Service Employees International Union. The campaign has deployed 40 organizers since January to rally fast-food workers behind unionization, saying the goal is to raise wages to $15 an hour. This long running battle for fair pay for fast food workers is a big issue for Kamala Harris, and it puts her ideologically opposed to Donald Trump. Here is a Fight For Fifteen video with Harris posted on Facebook: Trump’s Beef Initially it might seem Donald Trump is just jealous. We know he loves McDonald’s and maybe he is mad that Kamala Harris gets to “claim” his favorite restaurant. But his response is so weird. It’s both predictable and also uniquely Trump: He claims she didn’t work at McDonald’s. Like with Obama’s birth certificate, he demands to see records that prove she worked there. This is an unhinged way to attack a political opponent. Presidential Politics and McDonald’s There is a history of Presidents and hopefuls showing up at McDonald’s to seem more like a “man of the people.” Some, like Bill Clinton, really liked McDonald’s. There is a famous SNL skit about it (possibly based on this Clinton and Gore C-SPAN video). But McDonald’s has been used as a symbol of the people by many politicians. Ronald Reagan campaigned at a McDonald’s… And Mitt Romney tried to win over some positive press coverage by handing out fries to reporters. It's an amazing aspect of our democracy that the most powerful person would eat, and occasionally relish, a food that is so pervasive and maligned just to seem like a normal guy. (Seems easy enough but it can backfire and make you seem weird.) McDonald’s is like what Andy Warhol said about Coca-Cola: What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. ― Andy Warhol
Trump & McDonald’s Where Harris comes at McDonald’s from the angle of the labor, Trump comes at McDonald’s as a customer. Like with Clinton, we know that Trump honestly loves to eat McDonald’s. The most iconic image of Trump is him with fist raised in the air and blood on his face. But the other for me is from the White House dinner when the government was defunded, and he assembled a feast of fast food. He just looks so pleased with himself. On an episode of Election Profit Makers they theorized that this election is ba
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To Whom It May Concern: Season 2 of Hamburger Business Review kicked off with an episode about Mike finding employment at a quick service restaurant similar to the one’s we discuss on our show. We’ve talked about the work. We’ve interviewed his partner about the work’s effect on their relationship. We’ve learned about his crew, the difficulties of opening the folded child size fry boxes during rush hour, and the tangle of syrup tubes and ethernet cables that keep business flowing. But how long would Mike last? In this, the last episode of the season, we find out. A snack-sized podcast episode like this one demands some snack-sized news to go with it. McDonald’s is bringing back the Snack Wrap. It’s a chicken tender wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce, cheese, and either ranch or spicy sauce. The Reddit community seems unimpressed.
Welcome Hamburger Scholars! We’re thrilled to be in the company of Dr. Marcia Chatelain for this episode. Dr. Chatelain is the author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, an engrossing history of fast food franchising’s path through the civil rights movement and Richard Nixon’s big idea for what should come next. (Hint: it was not favorable credit terms for independent Black-owned businesses.)We start off our discussion with a retelling of the boycotts and eventual dynamiting of a Portland, Oregon McDonald’s on Union Avenue in the summer of 1970. We learn where to go when the corporation you’re researching doesn’t want you in their archive, what it is like to win a Pulitzer Prize for history, and why McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski has a bigger opportunity than he seems to realize. Come for the multifaceted American story of not-so-small business and not-so-free markets. Stay for her approach to McDonald’s-neutral parenting, why it helps to look like a soccer mom, and a brilliant prequel idea for Coming to America. Speaking of McDonald’s and Black business, media mogul Byron Allen has settled his 11-figure lawsuit against McD’s last month. Mr. Allen is the owner Allen Media Group, a conglomerate in control of the Weather Channel, nine different TV court shows, and 40 TV stations across 16 states. Allen’s lawsuit alleged that McDonald’s classified his networks as specifically for Black audiences, thereby excluding them from the main tranche of McDonald’s ad spend. McDonald’s and Allen settled for undisclosed terms. The restaurant chain says it will buy advertising time from his networks at market rates. Here’s an 18-year-old Byron Allen doing stand-up on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1979: What’s behind the smash burger phenomenon? Mike and his friend Xavier don’t find out, but do dig into double and triple cheeseburgers from For the Win. The verdict? It’s like a Big Mac. Chicken McNugget inventor…Ray Dalio?! We like to think that all you need for a good fast food invention is a concept and a recipe. But what about the packaging, the machinery, the supply chain? What about the financial engineering to guarantee your product a stable price over the surges and dips of its underlying commodity? A few months ago Ray Dalio went on a Bloomberg podcast and re-told the story of doing this work on chicken so that McDonald’s could unveil the McNugget. Cleverly breaking down the cost of a chicken into it’s component parts (mostly soy and corn), Dalio was able to get close enough to a futures market on chicken that suppliers could get their feed, McDonald’s could get their chicken, and we could get our McNuggets. MCD cooling off from $300 Here at HBR we keep our eyes on the MCD share price at all times. After hovering below $300/share, it finally got there for a few weeks only to be pulled back by tariff chaos and expanded war in the Middle East. This fall will mark two years since the October 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel and the subsequent leveling of Gaza, obliteration of hospitals and infrastructure, and starvation resulting from a tightened Israeli blockade. As we have covered on the show, these developments invigorate anti-American sentiment and drive down spending at iconically American chain restaurants in the region. McWieden + Kennedy You know that Portland, Oregon-based ad agency that did groundbreaking work for Nike in the 1980s? Would it surprise you to learn that they’ve been doing the bulk of McDonald’s strategy work for coming up on six years now? This insightful Reddit thread parses out what they’ve done in that time, particularly the way that McDonald’s promotions now are less and less about the food and more and more about media tie-ins and celebrities. Come to think of it, didn’t Grimace just have a birthday? It’s been two years since the Grimace birthday meal and milkshake and we’ve yet to see any of that stuff return. Here is to hoping he is still with us.
Today’s episode is a talk with Cabel Sasser, the co-founder of the software company and video game publisher Panic, and full disclosure, also Mike’s former boss. But we’re not here to talk about software or video games. We’re here because Cabel discovered Wes Cook, a McDonald’s artist (and so much more). The Blind Push of Vision 2020 McDonald’s transformed out of the Mascot Era of using Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Mayor McCheese, and their other characters with the Vision 2020 plan (a plan leading up to 2020 which was started around 2017). Part of this plan was the EOTF, or Experience of the Future, which included the ordering kiosks as part of a major redesign for stores. To incentivize the franchisee owners McDonald’s offered to cover 55% of the costs of the remodel if an owner was able to complete the renovation by a specific date. This was free money no operator wanted to turn down. And this is where the new generic feel of a modern McDonald’s came from.
We’re excited to have Marcus Estes back on the podcast to talk about finance because of his ability to make this stuff compelling! This week we’re skipping the case study in order to talk about the 10-K.
Welcome Hamburger Enthusiasts! Our guest today is writer, reporter, and author Brian Merchant. He writes the Blood In the Machine newsletter about AI, Silicon Valley, labor and power. He joined us for a discussion based on the very recent case study McDonald’s: Moving Toward a Fully Automated Future? and to teach us some lessons from the luddites. The case study, and much of our conversation, is really asking if we as a society have a problem with a certain level of automation. And the fully automated burger is still a capitalist fantasy. It’s more cost effective to hire low wage workers than install and maintain expensive robotics. The case study’s example of an “automated” McDonald’s was actually not automated at all. As our discussion moved into science fiction Chris asked the philosophical question, “If we could make a fully automated machine that sold burgers, should we?” To which Brian replied that it’s not up to us and our ethics. As soon as it’s profitable for a company to do it, they will. The problem for automation is that the United States has kept labor costs very low. The minimum wage in that Texas location is $7.25 an hour. If you enjoy Hamburger Business Review you can support us by subscribing, buying merch, or even just buying us a burger.