The movie The founder, starring Michael Keaton, tells the unheard story of how McDonald’s became a franchise. Mac and Dick Mcdonald were the founders of the restaurant. Through trial and error, the brothers failed to franchise the restaurant because of a lack of standards set. Ray Kroc, an amazing sales agent, meets the brothers when selling 8 units of Milkshake makers. He then convinces the brothers to attempt a franchise once again, which caused hesitation because of their previous experience. Ray signs a contract that allows him roughly 1% of each burger sold. As he expands, he encounters many errors. For instance, he would hire retired franchisees, and the outcome resulted in a lack of standards. Through this error, he learned that the fired-up and dedicated middle class were the perfect location owners. Whilst Ray was expanding the company at a rapid rate, he didn’t have the capital to continue. He eventually had to take out a mortgage on his home, and the brothers refused to increase his cuts. Harry Sonneborn hears of his financial troubles and recommends he purchases the land and leases it to the franchisees. This allowed him more control and break his contract by changing ingredients such as milkshakes to Inst-a-Mix powder to cut back on supplies expenses. After Mac was rushed to the hospital because of the stress Ray has put on the brothers, Ray shows up with a blank check to inform them he is buying out their share of the company.
This book is quite intriguing as it displays two central themes. Schumpeter describes in chapter 6, they showed creative destruction. Whenever there is innovation and technology. This correlates with the book in terms of the “Speedee service system.” Mcdonalds is the first of its kind and had the utmost potential to create its market, fast food. The lack of loyalty in a contract is also quite devastating, as they display it in this movie. Entrepreneurs rarely get the recognition they deserve, such as when Ray’s name was labeled as president of McDonald’s corporation.
The principal theme of this movie is to provide knowledge of the risk which Entrepreneurs face. We see this in the movie when Ray has to take out a mortgage on his home, as well as the McDonald’s brothers facing a high-risk corporate takeover. Although McDonald’s is viewed as great in the eyes of millions, we learned lots of companies are taken over and the founders do not receive any recognition. The book they saw, the unseen in the Unrealized, talks about the risk. From Ray him to take out a mortgage on his home while breaking even, as well as the company's high risk and means of his assets as well as when the company faced a lack of standards because of its rapid growth. For an entrepreneur viewing this movie, it is quite interesting to see how working with other people to handle your company can be a risk of its own. Entrepreneurs are always facing risk, whether it is from the risk of a corporate takeover. It is quite manipulative to view McDonald’s corporation as A Well-respected family-owned business when they watch this movie and realize that Ray, who took over, was not the founder. Entrepreneurs, however, benefit from Ray's business strategy, such as multiple owners for different locations as a benefit to society, allowing more jobs, and generating more revenue.
