Our company that we chose to research is McDonald’s; whose full company name is McDonald’s Corporation. McDonald’s is the world 's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, worldwide, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries and counting. McDonalds was founded May 14, 1940 in San Bernardino, California by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. The focus of McDonald’s at the time was their “Speedee Service System", they did this by introducing an assembly line style kitchen, which speed and ensured maximum efficiency. Then in 1954, 52 year old Ray Kroc, milkshake mixer sales man, hears that a restaurant is using 8 mixers and takes a trip to visit them. He becomes fascinated by the restaurant that he becomes a franchisee, and then in 1961 he bought the company from the McDonald’s brothers for $2.7 million. Now McDonald’s is a multi-billion dollar company and is one of the most recognized brands.
McDonald’s is managed as distinct geographic segments. Significant reportable segments include the U.S. and Europe, as well as Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa. This is also known as the “APMEA”. It is owned publicly with a ticker symbol of MCD. Don Thompson was named CEO and company president on June 30th 2012. Surprisingly for us, the address for the headquarters is in Oakbrook, Illinois. I would have thought it would be in New York City or somewhere like that (Lexis-Nexis).
From the Standard & Poor’s Stock Reports Online, we found that for the 2011 year the gross revenue was $27,006,000,000 while the net profit was $5,509,224,000. The stock price range is currently $107.74 – 107.01. So McDonald’s is doing quite well for itself, no surprise.
From the 10-K report on McDonald’s, we found that two factors affecting the company are brand image and food safety. Neither of these is surprising. Some years ago I remember hearing about problems about the name and the Scottish clan McDonald (or MacDonald, if you
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