- This is where it all comes together, or falls apart?
For How Burger Fast Food Became What it is Today: Part One and How Burger Fast Food Became What it is Today: Part Two, click the link. This is part three.
Meeting to fight back with a signature product, Kroc reaches out to his franchisers to see what they come up with. Burger King forces a company like McDonald’s to be better and keeps them on their toes, so to speak.
Edgerton and MacLamore have over 125 locations with the same rate of growth as McDonald’s, and they’re trying to figure out where to grow, location wise.
They have too many locations and they can’t lose momentum, they have to keep feeding the machine as it were, to fund the expansion
Pillsbury Offer
MacLamore gets a call from Pillsbury. They want to buy out Burger King and the make them an offer.
MacLamore thought it was a good idea, it would wipe out debt and guarantee cash flow. Pillsbury offered $18 million, or what would be $140 million today.
The two back and forth on what to do. MacLamore thought it was a good idea and wanted to do so to compete with McDonald’s but Edgerton was a little suspicious.
Kroc traveled the country to meet with franchises about new products, something to top the whopper.
The Filet-O-Fish
He ended up in Ohio, where there was a town with one location. One of the franchisees had the idea of a fish sandwich. The McDonald’s was in Monfort Heights, Cincinnati which at the time was about 87% Catholic. Traditionally on Fridays, Catholics ate fish.
The franchisee saw burger sales fall every Friday, where the idea of a fish sandwich came into play. Frozen and ready to sell, McDonald’s rolls out the Filet-o-Fish nationwide. It’s good and the people like it, but it still doesn’t compete with the Whopper.
The Pillsbury Offer is Accepted
MacLamore convinced Edgerton to unite with him and sign the Pillsbury offer.
Edgerton cashes out and MacLamore becomes part of Pillsbury. He wants to be huge and wants Pillsbury to make it happen.
But at a small town in Pennsylvania, a McDonald’s franchise owner is working on something new. And it’s about to be big.
In 1967 the signature burger hunt is over. The PA franchisee created a new burger, entirely of ingredients that every McDonald’s already has.
The Big Mac Needs Its Name
It was 21-year-old secretary Esther Glickstein who named the burger. She got a raise when she came up with the Big Mac name. The Big Mac launched in 1967, at all 800 locations, along with the most aggressive ad campaigns in company history.
There was even the sing songy ad with all the ingredients in the Big Mac. Do you remember the commercial?
The Big Mac accounts for 19% of all McDonald’s sales and creates over $400 million dollars in sales within a year.
Burger King is Stalled
MacLamore wants to go on the offensive. He’s ready to create another big new product, and fight back against McDonald’s. Pillsbury says no.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s triples it’s rate of expansions, leaving Burger King in their dust. MacLamore steps away from Pillsbury.
To date, there are over 36,000 McDonald’s restaurants worldwide and over 18,000 Burger Kings.
McDonald’s went overseas first, among one of the many things the business did to revolutionize the industry.
Burger King brings in $76 million per year and McDonald’s continues to outpace then with $1 billion per year in sales.
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