Stuff You Should Know - How McDonald's Works

Episode Date: April 2, 2010

McDonald's is arguably the most famous fast food restaurant on the planet. Join Josh and Chuck as they discuss the humble beginnings, menu items, practices and controversies of the fast food giant in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey Chuck, let's listen to some Debo. So Chuck, I got a good feeling. You like that? I love Debo dude. That's my favorite Debo song. Akron Boys. Yeah, they're from Ohio, late 70s, early 80s, quintessential new wave band Debo.

We just listened to Gut Feeling. It originally appeared on their 1978 album Q, Are We Not Men? A. Say it, Chuck. We Are Devo. Yeah, but with an exclamation. And not the uh. Right, yeah.

It doesn't say uh, we are Devo. No, it doesn't. And I got my copy from the soundtrack of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Uh huh. Right? Yeah. Isn't that, is it Life Aquatic or Aquatic Life? The Life Aquatic.

People are probably like, I thought this was on McDonald's. Yes, you would think so. And here's the reason why. You remember that I just said like 30 seconds ago, Devo is the quintessential late 70s, early 80s new wave band? I do remember that. Well, apparently the designers of Happy Meal Toys at McDonald's agree. Right.

They've released a series of Happy Meals toys that are little characters based on different genres of music. And there's one called New Wave Nigel and he's got these thin sunglasses and spiky hair. And they happen to have a very recognizable hat. Sort of looks like a flower pot that's upside down. Exactly. Uh huh.

And to Mark Mothers Ball and the other guys in Devo, it looked a lot like what they call their energy dome hat. Right. Which they trademarked. So now they're suing McDonald's for unlicensed use of this, of this hat. And McDonald's like, get in line. Exactly. Yeah, that's pretty accurate actually, Chuck.

McDonald's at any given point in time has a handful of lawsuits against them. I think it's any big company though. It is, but that's a good point. McDonald's has become this emblematic, symbolic face, the golden arches are like the logo of more than just McDonald's, the logo of corporate America. Obesity. Of America. Obesity.

Uh huh. McJobs. Globalization. Globalization. Yeah. We'll talk about that of course. Yeah. There's, there's, there's just for being a fast food restaurant, they've come to take

on these huge representations of these enormous concepts. And I got to admit, some they've handled well, some they haven't, but they're still standing, you know? Yeah. Well, they love it. You take the good with the bad as much as they hate being the symbol of the face of obesity. They're like, yeah, but we sell a lot of big Macs.

Exactly. We know that you like them. Fat boy. Right. Yeah. We have them too. Chuck. Yes.

We've got Devo out of the way. We can check that off the list. Okay. All right. You want to talk about Mickey D's? Should we go? Let's start with history. Okay.

Because it's a pretty interesting history. It is. A lot of people out there probably think, oh yeah, I know about McDonald's history because I've stood there in line and read the plaque that says Ray Kroc invented McDonald's and he started it all up. Yeah. The embossed plaque. Yeah.

The embossed plaque. Not true. No. I wondered as a child why the founder of McDonald's, last name wasn't McDonald's, it was Kroc. But it is. Because McKroc is, would you buy a burger from a place called McKroc? No. It's like buying a piece of furniture from unpeen at Huff Hines.

Right. Exactly. Very nice. How many times do we reference Coen Brothers films? A lot. All the time. Flashback to the Great Depression. Yeah.

Let's go have another piece of pie. That kind of time period. That song would have gone well too. It would have. In the 1930s, Dick and Mac McDonald, you might not recognize that name, they were running a movie theater in California and not doing too well. First question. Okay.

Who names their kid Mac McDonald? Yeah. A little suspect. Yeah. Proud wacky parents. Yeah. And they were not doing too great and so they noticed across the street, it's literally one of these stories where like, boy that hot dog business is gangbusters, we should

open up a hot dog stand. Yeah. So they borrowed $5,000, which seems like a lot of money at the time to open a hot dog stand. No doubt. Well, I think I get the impression that they opened like one of those very early diners because they call it the air dome hot dog stand, right? Yeah, air drone.

Air drone. Yeah. Yeah. The aquatic life. Sure. I get the same thing. And by 1940, they moved that from Arcadia, which was the original location, to San Bernardino and they changed the name to McDonald's barbecue.

Right. So they went from a hot dog stand to a barbecue joint. Well, it wasn't a barbecue, that just meant on the grill, I think, because they served burgers and burgers fries and milkshakes. Yeah. That change was a big deal because they dropped a lot of their stuff, right? Well, they shut down. They closed the business for a little while to retool, which was, you just kind of didn't

do this at the time. They were, yeah, because they were already pretty successful. This wasn't like a slouchy business, but the McDonald's brothers or the Brothers McDonald felt like they could do it better. I guess one of them had some sort of inspiration from the assembly line, right? Yeah. I think from the auto industry. And so they created the speedy system, speedy system, S-P-E-E-D-E-E.

And dude, that's where it really changed the world as we know it. And that's not overstating it. That was the birth of modern fast food. It is. They also did away with the car hops, like people on roller skates who used to come up and take your order at your car. You had to come in, but yeah, more than anything else, they changed the fast food industry with that speedy system.

Basically, they took the principles of the assembly line and applied it to food. So if you were, you know, in charge of cooking the burgers, you didn't put the burger on the bun. You got your little steak. You didn't put the cheese on the burger. Like there were different people involved in the burger making process. I can attest to this because my first job was at McDonald's. Well, I worked there too for an hour.

We'll talk about that later because that's some, we have some famous cohorts that worked at McDonald's. Oh, good. That I looked up. Nice. And we, we're not famous, but we worked there. Yeah. I didn't know your story.

I can't wait to hear that. So they, they were really successful over the next six years. They sold 21 franchises, open nine outlets themselves. And they were doing so well that they said, we need these multi-mixers that can mix five milkshakes at once because we need to increase the speed. And their multi-mixer salesman was a man named Ray Kroc. Yeah. And then the little bit of fate comes in, right?

These guys were running, I think there, are there eight shakes that it can make at a time? A multi-mixer? Five. Five shakes. Now it's probably. They ordered eight of them. Yes. And they had them running all day long.

And Ray Kroc's like, that's the most multi-mixers anyone's ever ordered at once. So he actually went out to the Burdue to find out what was going on. Burdue? Yeah. Remember the Hell's Angels podcast? I didn't know they were in Burdue. Oh, Sam Bernardino. Right.

Sorry. He went to go see it himself and was like, what is going on here? He was on board immediately. Apparently Jacques Pepin put it, the famous French chef of Jacques Pepin. He wrote an article about Ray Kroc and as he put it, he pitched the idea to the brothers to really start expanding their operation and they said, well, where would we get somebody to do this for us? And Ray Kroc said, what about me?

Right. And he became their franchising agent, right? Yeah. Apparently his original motivation was to sell multi-mixers and he figured if he could open up more franchises, they're selling tons of milkshakes. They're lousy with milkshakes, so I can sell more multi-mixers. So that was kind of how it started out. Yeah.

And he opened his first McDonald's franchise in De Plain, Illinois, right? And that's actually the now a museum that McDonald's location. Oh, really? There are two. There's a Big Mac Museum, which we'll talk about where the Big Mac came from later. Sure. And then there's the McDonald's Museum. Yeah.

Anyway. So he opens up that one and in the next five years, dude, he franchises 200 more restaurants. What's amazing though is that he didn't, he wasn't filthy rich in that next five years. No. He actually had a lot of trouble getting these things off the ground, right? So we've got one thing under our belt when we're describing the success of McDonald's, right? The

the the other thing that made McDonald's as successful as it is, um, was the real estate principles that the company took on, right? Yeah. He hired a guy named Harry Sona-Born, and he only worked there for like a decade, but that completely rewrote their business model, uh, to the point where they were making more money off of real estate than selling hamburgers. Right.

I mean, Ray Crock would be like, Hey, uh, we've got this kind of new-ish franchise. And McDonald's wasn't the first fast food restaurant. Howard Johnson's was around already. Sure. White Castle was around already. Sliders. They had, they had competition, right? Um, and these bigger guys who'd been around for a while could just build as many as they

wanted to in a region because they had tons of capital. Well, McDonald's franchise was still pretty young. Yeah. So when they went to franchisees, these were very hopeful people who are maybe, uh, you know, were, were for the underdog, that kind of thing. They're sort of green. They weren't like super investors. Right.

And so they didn't have a lot of money. So these guys would have to basically open one franchise at a time because the building expense and the land expense is so much. What Santa Born came up with was like, just lease the land and then sublease it to the, to the franchisee. Yeah. And then not only that, mark up the leasing fees, but initially it was 20% over what they were paying to lease the place.

Then they opted to 40. And then finally when McDonald's started rolling, it was either 40% or 5% of sales, whichever was greater. So yeah, the, uh, the franchise realty corporation, uh, made as much money as, as the McDonald's corporation for a while. If it doesn't still, it was a stroke of genius. Yeah. Basically.

And so that enabled croc, uh, in 1961 to buy out the McDonald's, uh, I'm sorry, the McDonald brothers for what was it, 2.7 million in like 1963. Yeah. 2.7 in 1961, uh, they gave up the rights to the McDonald's name, uh, Dick and Mack. If you want to know what happened to them, they reopened the original San Bernardino joint as the big M and uh, Ray Crock was like, you know, I don't like you reopening that original store. So I'm going to open McDonald's down the street and run you out of business.

Yeah. That's what happened. Yeah. That strategy is still, uh, followed today. If you pay any attention to Home Depot and Lowe's, oh, sure. Thank you for that. And uh, apparently croc and you know, this is in his autobiography, so we're not slinging stones here.

He actually fostered this bitterness between himself and Dick McDonald to was their surviving brother and, uh, croc considered the, the plane's location, the original first McDonald's. He never wavered from that. And himself, the founder. Well, obviously if you've ever seen the embossed plaque, you never hear any mention of the McDonald brothers. So people have challenged that from time to time enough so that the McDonald's corporation's official site now says, yes, Dick and Mack McDonald founded a restaurant and Ray Crock,

you know, originally came on board, but he's the founder of the McDonald's corporation. Right. So that's how they kind of justify that. Gotcha. Uh, I do want to point out too that, um, uh, unbeknownst to the franchisee, the capital that they got from raising, uh, the money for the, you know, with the leases, they used that to fund the opening of other franchises. So that's how they started kind of rolling and, uh, sort of like a Ponzi scheme a little

bit, but this one was, uh, slightly more legal and had a pretty good payoff. Finally, uh, Crock took McDonald's public in 65 and if you had bought $2,000 worth of stock that year and it's an initial public offering, it'd be worth 3.5 million today. Yeah. That's not a bad return on investment. So he bought the company in 61 by 63. He had opened up his 500 by 65. They went public and then 20 years after they went public, they were included in the Dow

Jones industrial average. That is what's called a super rapid ascent into wealth and success. The Dow Jones only has 30 companies and McDonald's is one of them. What's more, and one of the things that explains that success, but that kind of also supports it is that, um, they started catering toward kids and cultivating customer loyalty at a very early age. Thanks to a guy named Willard Scott, who you may know as the weather man for the Today Show for many years, the Demented Smuckers Jelly Spokesperson or Bozo the Clown.

Yeah. Or Ronald McDonald. Yep. He was the first one. He was. Uh, first in a long, long line of Ronald McDonald's, um, and he was the, the first character and then pretty soon they started adding more and more, uh, McDonald's characters. But let's stick with Ronald for a second.

Did you know that they, they, um, introduced Ronald McDonald in 1965, right? I did. Yes. Or I think it was 63. By 1970, 1969, more kids could identify Ronald McDonald than they could the American president. That's American kids. Right. 90% of them could identify Ronald McDonald six years after he was introduced.

Yeah. Yeah. And my research, I don't know if that's true or not, but it says that, uh, Willard Scott was originally let go because he was too fat and they didn't want a big fat clown as their, uh, spokesman for their food. He is a leaner than usual clown, except for those huge hawk thighs that he's always had. Oh, the saddlebag. Yeah.

Like they're riding pants. Right. Yeah. Okay. So they come up with Ronald McDonald, but they're trying to figure out how to expand the characters. Right. Well, Chuck, you and I grew up in the eighties.

We've ridden a fry guy or two before out in the playground. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, Hamburglar. The Hamburglar. Grimace. Grimace. Um, you've got Mayor McCheese, who was one of my personal favorites.

Yeah. Um, the, uh, Big Mac, uh, cop. Oh yeah. Like, I wish he had his name. I do too. Well, there's some, listen to your mail for us. Right. Um, and all of these people originally were going to be licensed characters from Sid

Marty Croft. Uh-huh. The guys who used to eat a ton of acid and create children's shows, HR Puffin stuff. Right. Um, so originally McDonald's corporation approached Sid Marty Croft and said, Hey, maybe want to license your puffin stuff characters. Sid Marty Croft said, okay, we can, we'll totally do that. They waited for McDonald's to call back, waited for him to call back McDonald's finally

called back and said, now we're not going to do it. And blatantly ripped them off. Oh yeah. So Sid Marty Croft. They look a lot like, like Sigmund the sea monster. They kind of all had that same thing. I saw a commercial from 1971. It's the first one that Grimace appears in and actually features a young Jody Foster.

Oh really? It is straight out of the H&R puffin, HR puffin stuff shows like instead of flowers, there's little cheeseburgers everywhere. I mean, it's just completely like a Sid Marty Croft ripoff. So much so that when the Croft brothers sued, they were awarded 50 grand, but that was it. But did you know this Grimace, who's this bumbling, happy, purple, weird sidekick of Ronald, best friend, was originally evil Grimace. Which is probably why they called him Grimace.

He had three pairs of arms and they were meant to steal as many shakes as possible. Really? Yeah. And then they figured, that's just creepy. Grimace don't like it. So we're going to put it back to one pair of arms and he's going to be nice. Wow. Yeah.

Evil Grimace. You know, the Sid Marty Croft had the place in Atlanta. You didn't grow up here. But when I was a kid, Sid Marty Croft land was at the top of the top floor of the Omni, the old Omni, you know, what became Phillips Arena. What? Yeah. And then there was this escalator.

I remember, I mean, now it's probably not as long as I remember, but it seemed like it looked at the longest escalator in the world at the time that went to the top to Sid and Marty Croft land. Did they create the banana splits too? I don't think so. Where are they from Atlanta? I don't know the connection there. I know it was a pretty big failure.

Yeah. It closed down in short order. Yeah. But I went. I'll bet it was real popular among the hip teenagers. I bet. Especially in like 1976. Right up their alley.

All right, Josh. Let's say you wanted to open a McDonald's restaurant back in the day and you're Ray Crock. And how would you go about spotting a good location? What are you looking for? Well, first I would put on my 10 gallon hat. I would board a helicopter, which he did. I would start flying around areas that were up and coming.

And I would try to find an intersection with a church, a school, maybe some other stores. And I would plop it right there. Yep. That's exactly what he did. And specifically, I think physical, space wise, developers look for more than 32,000 square feet, which is a little over 9,700 meters. A height of 22 feet, which I don't understand. I guess the height and clearance is what they're looking for.

Yeah. Elevation. They're looking for the McDonald's for all to see. Exactly. They look to place them near intersections with traffic lights, or airports, schools, churches. Wherever there's a ton of people. Yeah.

And originally, the thought behind it was they wanted to put it where the heart of the community was. Well, no. They wanted to put it where as many people as possible were going to pass by three times a day. Right. And they still use that classic speedy type system. I'm sure they don't call it that, but still the assembly line, automated stuff is taken

over. There are many aspects, obviously, if you've been to McDonald's in the last decade, you've seen the automatic fry cooker and the automatic drink filler, and you go to the drive-thru window and there's a little screen telling you what you're ordering. Dude, let's talk about a drive-thru window, because there are certain McDonald's in the United States where when you pull up to the drive-thru menu, you place your order. You are speaking to someone in a call center in another state. Yeah.

Do you know that? Is it another state or another country? Another state. I think there are some that are in other countries. Right. Yes. But based on the New York Times article I read, these were McDonald's in Missouri and they were talking to people in Colorado.

And they would take a snapshot, right, of you, so they know. Right from the computer in the call center. Yeah. So when you get to the window to pick up your food, they see a photo and they say, well, this is that Chuck guy. He's all tubby in his front seat and he's salivating for a Big Mac, so here's your Big Mac. And then they say that the picture is destroyed.

Oh, is that what they say? That's what they say. Because I wondered about that. Destroyed. Yeah. So McDonald's is, I think because of as much money as the company has, it's long been on the cutting edge of like new technology, anything that can be used to cut down costs McDonald's is into.

Yeah, absolutely. And they're also into, believe this or not, cleanliness. Yeah. Ray Kroc, they said, was like obsessed with being clean. I got the impression he was a tattoo CD, maybe. Well, my theory is, and I worked in the restaurant business, you can never have a restaurant that's too clean. So I appreciate his dedication to cleanliness.

Apparently you'd like to say, if you got time to lean, you got time to clean. Yeah. And anytime somebody said that to me after they turned around, I'd be like, yeah, give me the old high hard one. Sure. You know, there's a lot of leaning in the McDonald's around my neighborhood, actually. Yeah. There are most of them, but even that apparently is a step up as far as McDonald's and other

countries go. McDonald's is widely credited for changing the standards in the industry, the restaurant industry, for bathroom cleanliness in Hong Kong. Yeah. Did you know that? Yeah. And Thailand? Social interaction, because apparently in Hong Kong, there was never such a thing as

like organized lines to stand in line and get something. So they were literally forced to stand in line for the first time to complete their order. So some say that it brought some social graces and organization to these kind of chaotic scenes. That's great. And you know what? I believe that because when I left in LA, I would always get muscled in on by a little Asian women.

And it used to bother me, then I was like, you know what? I bet you in their country, you're fighting to get in position to get your, you know, whatever's in the market. So. That's exactly what they want you to think. I was it, I was duped into being kind, kind of understand, cut in front of me. That's fine. Exactly.

Here you go, lady. Welcome to the US. Right. What a sucker. Chuck, what's your favorite menu item at McDonald's? Answer me. I'm going to go with the hangover helper, double quarter pounder with cheese, mayonnaise only, add French fries on top and smush it all together.

mayonnaise only, no ketchup or mustard? I don't do that stuff. Pickles? No. Yeah. You got to have the sesame seed bun though. So you have a bun, a burger, cheese, burger, bun with mayonnaise and French fries. Yeah.

Okay. I don't think that appears on the menu really. Oh, that's the Chuck special. Huh. I'm a straight up double cheeseburger guy. Yeah, those are good. But we can talk a little bit about the history of a few of their menu items because I find it kind of interesting.

I do too. That's why I asked you. The filet of fish was born in the 1960s because at the time we had really great Catholics in America who had abstained from eating meat on Friday and Ray Kroc was like, we got lagging sales on Friday because all these Catholics, can we invent something here to make up for the sale? Right. And they were losing sales to places like big boy.

Sure. I love big boy. But sure. And the reason why they were losing these sales was because these places had a fish alternative. So Ray Kroc comes up with a brilliant idea and it is. The Hula Burger. Right. Which was?

A slice of pineapple instead of meat on a bun. Yeah. Not a very good idea. No, it wasn't. But luckily by this time, the McDonald's Corporation was smart enough to know that they needed to test menu items first and they tested it. But at the same time, they tested another item called the filet of fish. Yes.

Which was, I think, thought up by a franchisee, correct? Uh-huh. Lou Groen and he thought of it and put it on his menu, which McDonald's said, that's cool. Let's see how it goes. And it went over like gangbusters and they said, you know what, we're going to add this to our national menu. Yeah.

So a franchisee beat out the CEO and chairman of McDonald's Corporation. Yeah. That's something. Well, that means he's smart enough to listen to them as well. Yeah. Well, I think that's kind of a recurring theme. It seems like Ray Kroc surrounded himself with people who were smart and sharp, but also he listened to them.

And when they were, you know, milling about the office, he'd make them push a broom or something when they were walking down the hall. Right. You're too busy to lean, you're too busy to clean. No. Close enough. If you got time to lean, you got time to clean. And the Big Mac too had similar origins.

It was a franchisee's idea out of the Pittsburgh area, right? Yeah. Which is key, I think, to its success. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that it was in Pittsburgh and it wasn't in Los Angeles, very health-conscious Los Angeles. No, in the 70s, though, it was.

Oh, LA's always been that way. Oh, okay. And Delegati, who was invented the Big Mac, which we all know is two-all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion, on a sesame seed bun, with the third bun there in the middle, which is key to just keep it all together, evidently. So people in Pittsburgh said, this is awesome. And Ray Kroc said, okay, we're going to add this to our menu. Right.

It actually became their signature sandwich. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And I find it odd that earlier we mentioned that the McDonald Brothers opened up their other restaurant once their name was taken. It was called the Big M. Right.

Apparently, there's no connection there, but it seems a little hinky to me. The Big Mac and the Big M, huh? Well. I hadn't made that connection. Really? Yeah. What do you think? No, I'll tell you what I think.

I think Big Mac is a reference to truck drivers and big guys who would eat a sandwich like that. Oh. Which is actually kind of daring because you're almost automatically cutting out your female customers. Sure. You know? Yeah.

Big or petite Mac, maybe it would have been a better name for it. Maybe so. Whichever you like. And Chuck, you mentioned the McDonald's Brothers in their original restaurant. Uh-huh. Well, they kept selling hot dogs for a while, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Why didn't McDonald's sell hot dogs? Do you want to know? Sure. Because Ray Kroc felt that the mystery meats, and I just made air quotes, put in the hot dogs, didn't fit or live up to McDonald's standards. Sure. So no more hot dogs? Nope.

So even though you have pure all beef franks now, of course, I'm sure you did back then, still won't find one. No. I bet out of spite. That's my idea. Josh flash forward to 1973. When my favorite McDonald's menu item all time was invented. Really?

Oh, yeah. We are talking clearly about the circular broken yolk egg with cheese, Canadian bacon on an English muffin. Which in Canada they just call it bacon. Right. A.K.A. the Egg McMuffin. Yep. And another franchisee, Herb Peterson, operated six McDonald's.

He actually came up with the first national ad slogan where quality starts fresh every day. Convince Ray Kroc to try it out. He loved it. And then they got into the breakfast business. Right. And they debuted it with another McDonald Land character named Birdie, the early bird. I don't remember that.

Yeah. Don't you remember Birdie? She was the, she was clearly a female. She had like a orange flight suit and a scarf and flying goggles, Birdie, the early bird. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. And we got one more to talk about.

You can't talk about McDonald's without the chicken McNugget. And actually remember this one clearly because I was right at the age. Yeah. Like 20. 12 years old. Jerk. This was actually thought of by a CEO, which was, which was rare because usually the franchisees were, uh, were owners were coming up with these.

Right. Fred Turner was the chairman and he put out a request and said, you know what? He commissioned it. I love the quote. He commissioned a chicken finger food without bones about the size of your thumb. Pretty specific. Yeah. So they came back.

Here it is. Sort of even looks like a thumb. A little bit. Now, now that I see it, it's going to be tough to eat them. Yeah. I used to eat those. I used to eat them like crazy. Not anymore.

Nothing but barbecue sauce. I would do a mix of the barbecue and the sweet and sour. Yeah. It's a good mix. It is. So we need to talk about a little bit of the criticism, right? Oh yeah. And the good that they do, we'll follow with the good that they do.

Well, you know, Devo is not the only people who have filed a lawsuit against McDonald's. Neither are Sid and Marty Croft, right? And it goes both ways. McDonald's has been known to file a lawsuit or two, right? Oh yeah. Specifically, probably most famously, against Greenpeace. You had the McLeibel case? Yeah.

Did you read the McLeibel pamphlet? No, not the actual pamphlet, but I kind of know what it's all about. It's a little broad in my opinion to have drummed up that much iron and anger. Oh, really? In the mid-80s, two London Greenpeace members basically started printing pamphlets. And I guess what it was was at the time nobody was talking about this stuff, and maybe they were the first. Oh yeah, probably.

Like about cutting down rainforests for grazing land, for cattle that McDonald's was using, inhumane practices of killing the cattle, exploiting workers, that kind of stuff. I guess now that I think about it, it's so ingrained into our culture now, awareness like that, that maybe in the mid-80s it just totally wasn't. Right, got their attention. Yeah, and it got McDonald's attention too, because they sued these people. Yeah, and they won. They won because these guys who put out the pamphlet couldn't back up everything that

they stated in the pamphlet with facts. Do you know why? Because they were poor, and they worked for Greenpeace, and they defended themselves. So these two acted as their own lawyers, and McDonald's lawyers buried them. They wouldn't give them documents that they asked for. They buried them in procedural stuff, and won. But at the same time, these two people, and Greenpeace as a whole, are just doing as much PR as they can about the case, and McDonald's just took a huge hit.

That was probably the first real turning point as far as McDonald's image goes. Yeah, where it wasn't just like McDonald's is the greatest thing ever. Right, and people started to really kind of pay attention to like, wait a minute. Where do you get your views? McDonald's said, he loved my child. What do you mean he really just wants profit? And they were famously sued in the 90s with the hot coffee that spilled on the old lady's lap.

Yeah, and I always thought that was just like an example of how we need tort reform. I didn't realize why the woman was awarded the money. She got third degree burns in her crotch, and was in the hospital for eight days. What? The reason that the jury awarded her such a huge amount, it was in the tens of millions I think, right? It just said, well I don't know how much it was specifically, but compensatory and punitive damages. It was a lot of money, and it was for spilling coffee on her crotch.

But the reason that the jury awarded her such so much money was because McDonald's was well aware of the problem, and had for many years received hundreds of complaints but just didn't do anything about it. That their coffee was too hot? Yeah. Yeah. Josh in the 90s again, McDonald's took a bold move and came out and said, you know what? We're no longer going to cook our french fries and beef fat, even though it's so good.

I know. Do you remember the change? Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to cook it in vegetable oil. So that was their big announcement, and then this sort of implied in a way that they were vegetarian fries because it's just potatoes cooked in vegetable oil. Not true because they contain beef flavoring and suede.

So Hindus obviously and vegetarians had a big problem with this. But McDonald's very fairly said, hey man, we never said that these were vegetarian fries. But we'll pay up anyway. They ponied up like 10 million bucks in an apology. Yeah. And that's what you do when you got deep pockets. Oh yeah. You pay up a little bit, apologize, it goes away.

Yeah. And the next person in line steps up to sue you. Right. And in the meantime, 5 million people step up in line to order a double cheeseburger. Yeah, absolutely. And that pays for everything. Yeah. A couple of more big high profile things.

That was the Book Fast Food Nation that charged McDonald's with globalization and anti-union tactics. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. And that was also mentioned in the McLeible pamphlet that they only use or only employee workers who are basically down on their luck have no alternatives. They overwork them.

They exploit them. So there's high turnover. So there's no chance of unions or unionizing among McDonald's employees. And then Morgan Spurlock, of course, with the film Super Size Me, the documentary, famously went on a 30 day diet of nothing but McDonald's and no exercise. And almost dying. And did you watch it? No, I've never seen it.

Yeah, it was entertaining. And he does like McDonald's was in the firing scope. But he was making a statement about the fact that, you know, when we were kids, a large drink was like 18 ounces. And now you can get like a 72 ounce soda. Do we really need that? Right. And actually, that had some big effects, I guess, in McDonald's.

They took their Super Size option off of their menu right after the film was screened at Sundance. Yeah. Which was pretty smart. And actually, I guess it's not that much action, but still, it was a big deal. Little indie filmmaker got them to change their menu. So instead of Super Size, it's now called Large. Chuck, was Fast Food Nation turned into Food Inc. the movie?

Is the movie Food Inc. based on Fast Food Nation? No, there is a movie Fast Food Nation as well that Richard Linklater did. Gotcha. No, you're thinking of Waking Life. Okay. We should also probably say that there's some good that this company's done. Aside from making great, greasy hamburgers. Right.

Which I do love. I don't eat McDonald's much, but boy, is it good. Obviously, first and foremost, you got the Ronald McDonald House, right? Great, great organization. Sure. What do they do? Well, if you have a kid who is in the hospital a lot, especially out of state, seeing a specialist, and your family needs to be there to support the kid, but you don't really have enough

for a six-month hotel stay, there are houses around the country called Ronald McDonald Houses that your family can go stay out for free or next to nothing that are close to these hospitals, children's hospitals, so you can be near your kid and have to fly back and forth or lose your job, that kind of thing. They also, like we said, have been charged with globalization, and they will counter that, no, no, no, when we go to these countries, we have cultural specific menu items, and that's very true. We have, I think, an article about wacky McDonald's menu items from around the world, and we

actually try and incorporate the local culture into our menu instead of just forcing this American thing down their throat. Right. That's what they say. Right. And there's a picture, actually, of a pair of McDonald's workers in India, and there's the Maharaja Mac and the vegetable burger with cheese, both of which I imagine are cooked without beef, since India's kind of big on the cow worship.

Right. Right? Yeah. I don't think that McDonald's would go over very well if you walked into one in Mumbai and, hey, here's one of your gods right here on the menu. Yeah, they've taken beef off the menu there. Right. So, this is a perfect example of the good that McDonald's does.

Yes, there's good. It's called localization, and you're taking a multinational, but very culturally specific company and adjusting it as needed locally, localizations. Sure. Great. But the thing is, it's so disingenuous when people put that point out, because of course McDonald's isn't going to serve hamburgers in India. Because they want to sell food.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, they're going to adjust their menu to reflect local values, because without that, nobody's going to buy it. Josh, I know we're kind of short on time. There's some more stuff we got to stick in here, though. We need to talk about the McNoggan. Did you ever see that?

The fried chicken head? What? Yeah, I'll show you a picture. This lady purportedly got in her box of McDonald's chicken wings, a fried chicken wing head. And it, you know, it's exactly what it looks like. But it is, Snopes has said that it has not been verified or disproven. Noggin. Yeah, you got to see it.

It's really funny. And because she has refused to turn it over for inspection, and so it's just kind of still floating out there. It was like 10 years ago. So, I'm sure it's gone away by now. Did you ever hear the rumor about the cow's eyeballs in the shakes? Not true. As far as we know.

My favorite McDonald's thing is in Los Angeles, I worked in the film business, and we shoot. Most McDonald's commercials are shot at this one fake store in L.A. The whole thing is on wheels, not literally the building, but everything in there is on wheels, it's got lights all rigged, it's all faults. And every day when you shoot there, they have four o'clock fries. Oh really? And at four o'clock, the production stops and they bring out like 50 large fries for everyone to just chow down on.

So it is a functioning McDonald's. Yeah, but it's not a functioning restaurant, but you got to be able to fake the cooking and all that stuff. Gotcha. Okay. That's awesome. And you worked there, we need to tell that real quick. No we don't.

I worked there for an hour. I worked there for a few weeks. I worked there for one hour. I went in the training and in the basement. Yeah, so did I. And they gave me my, like, took my uniform size, showed me the little video, told me to clock in and out. And I was like, all right, you start in the morning at like 4 a.m.

And the next morning I was in Athens and the alarm went off and I went, I can't do this. Yeah, good for you. Never went back, never cashed my check, so I got to check out there with my name on it. Oh really? You should get that. For like $4.50 or something? I'll pay you, I'll pay you, I'll pay you, I'll pay you, I'll pay you, I'll pay you,

I'll pay you And Josh, we can...not, we'll be remiss if we didn't talk about some of our famous cohorts who have worked at McDonald's. OK. And they are as follows, eh? Chuck. Shania Twain. Yay.

Sharon Stone. Yeah. Jay the rat, Lino. Really? I mean, Ok, I mean Camp Cocoa. Pink, and Pink had a quote, she says, quote, I would open the restaurant because I'd be tripping on acid and I would say could I have a bathroom duty?

And I would sit in the bathroom and watch the tiles. Nice. So that's what pink was doing Carl Lewis Olympian Carl Lewis cool Macy Gray Yeah, if you had a funny voice taking your order at some point it might have been Macy Gray Where did she work? Does it say I? Do not see where that was no, okay Rachel McAdams. Yeah super smoking cute actress and D.L. Hughley mm-hmm worked at McDonald's and us and they and we did and they a lot of them still say that it was like a great job and it Taught them order and cleanliness and all that good stuff. I I Didn't get any of that from McDonald's. I worked there for an hour. So I can't really say I got a paycheck. It was good. Sure

I was your station Sixty I would do just about anything bathroom front. I I don't remember I never cooked anything like I never cooked patties, but I make fries right put cheese on stuff like that It was all over the place That's a superstar of the line. No, no, it was just like the guy was I don't think he'd ever met Ray Kroc the guy who managed that place It was a little too involved for like a late 20s guy with you know the 17 year old staff He had going like you know nothing not to cast any dispersions or suggests he was up to anything I mean like he was just too on our level. Yeah, you want to be your buddy. Yeah, you know, they say that one out of every eight

People in the American workforce worked at McDonald's at one point I'll bet and I think 50% of their executives started out in their stores Yeah, and there's a million stats We won't get into how many fries they sell on the fact that it wraps around the earth a gazillion times every day or something Ridiculous like that. Okay. There's so many stats. We got a lot of good McDonald's content on the website I'm gonna finish this with two words Shamrock shake boom. I'm gonna finish it with one word McRib. Yeah, nice Chuck Sure, we almost forgot that great Simpsons episode on the McRib, too

if you want to know more about the Simpsons McDonald's the McRib the shamrock shake deal Hughley or Devo you can type any of those things into the handy search bar at how stuff works calm I defy you to since I said that I think it's time for listener mail Do we have time for listener mail? No, we don't let's do this. Let's put out the call Okay, we are coming to New York City folks in June first week in June for Internet week or is it second week? I think it's June 7th to 14th. Yes, and we are looking to have a stuff You should know happy hour with the fans whoever wants to come and we need some help on finding a place That will host this happy hour for free

Well, yeah, we're just we just need a place that we can show up and be and let everybody know we're gonna be at We don't need to rent it or anything. Well, preferably be someone who would shut down except for us And they will be guaranteed probably a lot of people in there buying food and drinking beer Awesome, but so New York City fans if you have any connections, please let us know and we are actually looking for t-shirt designs Yeah, we're having a t-shirt design contest. We're gonna select what the best three four maybe we haven't worked that out yet All right, we haven't worked that part out everybody, but we are calling for t-shirt designs look for Activity on that on the Facebook fan page Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant and stuff You should know podcast fit fan page on Facebook and probably some tweets on it

We're gonna have a Twitter feed coming up soon. Yeah, I think it's gonna be like Sysk maybe or something like that. We're getting with the times. Yeah, finally I guess that's about it then right Chuck if you have an email that you want to send to us We'll get back to listener mail next week. Yeah. Yeah, wrap it up smack it on the bottom send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works calm Want more how stuff works check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you you're ready to travel in 2023?

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