13A- Reading Reflection

The book I read was Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald’s by Ray Kroc.

What surprised me most about this book and story was that McDonald’s success was grown slowly. You think of a major chain like that sort of exploding at the start with lots of financing from existing competitors, but McDonald's’ wasn’t grown that way. The success story was a lot less fantastical and progressed much slower than you would’ve thought. I admired Ray’s commitment to improvement. When he went on his venture to fix the fries it shows that entrepreneurs don’t wear suits, they go out and get their hands dirty. It was also interesting to note the logistics of McDonald's, how they created a new efficiency with their industrial-style “assembly line”.Ironically I most admire how to innovate and committed ray was, but I also didn’t like that Ray would ignore traditional metrics. I imagine there’s a lot of entrepreneurs to learn by reading and looking at data, and although a large part of what Ray did was consumer interaction, I still feel like he wasn’t well-read or knowledgeable in a textbook sense when entering this industry.

Kroc faced adversity working to sell the Multimixers, his old company ended up taking 60% of his revenue from selling this product, a deal Kroc had to make to get the startup money he needed. He refers to this part of the story as him “grinding it out”, He struggled with his finances and nearly conceded. Rays biggest competency was recognizing the logistical potential McDonalds has, he identified that no one was delivering quality food for a low price and fast service. Hamburgers and fries aren’t a new idea, but Ray was able to make a logistical fix that pretty much created a whole industry: the fast-food industry. Understanding the contacts was honestly a bit confusing for me, I know the real estate McDonald’s owned (or maybe didn’t own, but was franchised on?) was an important factor in the business. I’d like to understand this more though. If I were able to ask two questions to Kroc, I’d ask:

1.    what do you regret about your venture?

     Ray was successful, but that doesn’t mean his startup was perfect. Undoubtedly, he made a lot of mistakes that we as entrepreneurs can learn from.

2.    How can you ensure quality control among all your franchises now that they are too big for you to individually manage?

I’d ask this because there’s a notable difference between the quality of McDonald's, I’m curious as to why this is because I’ve never had a problem with Chick Fil A

Ray cherished hard work, I think he enjoyed it most of the time and believed it was absolutely necessary to work as hard as he did in order to succeed. I share that opinion; I genuinely enjoy working and learning—that’s why I'm at UF and not a second-tier state school. I enjoy the challenge and ambition around me.