PART 1, COMPANY OVERVIEW:
I. Brief Description of the Company
The McDonald’s Corporation is one of the world’s most known and leading restaurant retailers to provide fast, convenient and tasty food to millions of customers worldwide each day. Headquartered in the United States and a company that began with small beginnings, and a simple burger it now has expanded menu that includes healthy food. Currently, the McDonald name and its brand serves to approximately 64 million customers each day, in over 333,000 local restaurants locations, in about 119 countries.
II. Company History
The McDonald name and history began in 1940 when Dick and Mac McDonald open their doors in San Bernardino, California to the public as “McDonald’s Barbeque Restaurant” and featured a large menu and car hop service. As time progressed the brothers simplified their menu, kept their hit item the 15 cent burger on the menu and introduced French fries to the menu and triple thick milkshakes. In1954, Ray Kroc, a salesman tries to sell the brothers multi-mixers, but instead has a stroke of luck, a sense of timing and an idea borne in his head and hamburgers become his future. A short year later in Illinois, Kroc opens his first McDonalds in Illinois and approximately ten years later, there are 700 locations throughout the United States and becomes a public company by 1965. With a vision, a great team, a quality burger, McDonalds changes the course of history and becomes one of the most familiar names worldwide. With its signatures arches, its 15 cent burgers, its triple thick milkshakes, the introduction of Ronald McDonald, its approach to business and cleanliness, it’s not too much of surprise that merely 12 years after Ray Kroc’s first opening, the company became international and opened doors in Canada and Puerto Rico. Throughout its history McDonald’s has made great debuts from its signature burger, to its fries, the
References: http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/our_story.html http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/about-us/development/overview.shtml http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/MCD.N/key-developments