McDonald’s and Starbucks

Two giants of the dining industry. McDonald’s and Starbucks. One with a “Speedee system” and one as your third place. Two almost opposite sides of the dining market have very similar beginnings…

McDonald’s

Richard and “Mac” Maurice McDonald, founded a restaurant called McDonald in 1940 in San Bernardino, California. The restaurant was a typical fast food restaurant, no different to any other restaurants. That all changed when 8 years later, both Richard and Maurice put their thinking caps on and came up with the “McDonald’s Speedee System”. This new system could grind out a batch of fresh burgers in about 30 seconds and the taste of a burger was still Lively. After this system invention, their business was booming and all they had was a simple menu and the Speedee system.
In 1955, The McDonald’s restaurant ordered 6 milkshake makers to work alongside the Speedee System. These were a lot of milkshake makers for a tiny restaurant. At the other end, the food equipment retail company, Prince Castle, had a salesman called Ray Kroc. He was checking on the company sales. McDonald was purchasing more milkshakes than most restaurants, so Kroc decided to Visit McDonald and see why they needed so many milkshake makers. It was then, he discovered the McDonald that was literally printing cash. He was shaken by the efficiency of McDonalds and knew it would be great for franchising, so he joined the McDonald brothers on their journey as their salesman. Ray Kroc is now known for founding McDonalds, but it was his vision of franchising that led McDonalds to the way it is today.

3 decades after the founding of McDonalds, another company rose up top in a similar way: Starbucks.

Starbucks

Another company that had a similar rise was Starbucks.

Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington 1971. The founders of Starbucks were Jerry Baldwin, Zev Seigl and Gordorn Bowker. The trio were inspired by entrepreneur Alfred Peet to sell high quality coffee beans and coffee makers. At the time, people in the US were drinking terrible tasting and bad quality coffee. In 1982, an American businessman working for a Swedish coffee maker company called Hammarplast, Howard Schultz first walked into a Starbucks store. He was assigned to go there because Starbucks was selling more coffee makers than Nordstrom. From his first cup of coffee, he was drawn into the Starbucks business, he joined a year later. In 1983 Howard went to Italy and became fascinated with the romance of Italian coffee houses. He came back to the States with a vision to make a third place other than work and home. He left Starbucks for a short period and found his own coffeehouse : II Gioranle. He then came back and, with the help of local investors, put a bid and purchased Starbucks.

From the first day Howard bought Starbucks, it wasn’t a normal company. Not one that would only celebrate the rich coffee taste and tradition, but also one that brings a place that can be social and connect you with everyone.

Conclusion

So we’ve discussed the two similar companies that have an almost identical rise to the top. So what have we learnt? Well, your company needs a natural salesman. Of course, the product is one of the most important things in a company, but you can always try to perfect the product, but you will eventually have to sell it to the world. If a company is just a bunch of chefs or technical guys, then no matter how good your product may be, if you don’t have a natural salesman on your team you can’t scale up. You can see that McDonald and Starbucks were destined to be innovative, but they were also destined to be forever a corner shop. However, in the two scenarios, Ray Kroc and Howard Schultz were the two salesmen that changed both companies business wise. In the end they both became CEO in both companies.

As you can see, in the beginning of McDonald, there was one store. But 15 years later, in 1955, just around the time Ray Kroc joined McDonald there were 7 McDonald, but in another 15  years, the number was 1500. And most recently, (2022) there are 40, 275 McDonald’s restaurants.

And what about Starbucks?At the time of the founding of Starbucks, there was one shop. In 1986, around the time Howard Schultz joined there were 6 Starbucks coffee shops. 15 years later there were 3,266 . And now, (2022) there are around 32,250 Starbucks coffee outlets.

Number of McDonald’s stores by years

Year	Stores
1940	1
1955	7
1965	700
1970	1,500
1980	6,200
1990	11,800
2005	30,766
2010	32,737
2020	39,198

Number of Starbucks stores by years

Year	Stores
1971	1
1990	84
2000	3,501
2010	16,858
2020	32,660