of the U.S. edible potato crop and 2% of all chicken each year. These purchase volumes, coupled with McDonald's insistence on quality and uniformity, have led to a revolution in meat and potato processing.

The company's purchasing power is so great that the successful introduction of a new product into its system changes the food habits of most Americans, which turns out to be a real boon for some food and agricultural industries. When the chain introduced "Egg McMuffin" as the first item on their breakfast menu in the early 1970s, English muffins sold well in only a few regions of the country. By making the muffin popular nationwide, McDonadds helped create a solid market segment that has since grown at twice the rate of the bakery industry as a whole. The new Chicken McNuggets, introduced in 1982, had the same impact. Today, "chicken legs" are widely copied by competitors, and McDonald's, the king of hamburgers, has become the second largest supplier. chicken after the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

McDonald's influences the competitive positions of large food industry companies. Consider only its impact on the soft drink industry: McDonald's restaurants sell 5% of all Coca-Cola sold in the United States, both in draft and in bottles and cans. And if, instead of Coca-Cola, McDonald's began selling Pepsi-Cola in its retail outlets, the eight percent advantage of the Coca brand over Pepsi would be reduced by almost half, and the leadership in concentrates for the preparation of the drink on tap would disappear almost completely.

The economic power of McDonald's in non-food industries is even less recognized. What most real estate experts probably haven't realized is that in 1982, McDonald's surpassed the Sire chain of retail stores to become the world's largest retail property owner. In fact, it is real estate control that explains why McDonald's profits so much from food service businesses. Had this not been the case with real estate, McDonald's would never have become the financial powerhouse of the catering industry, which has achieved a 25.5% profit margin and a 24.1% annual revenue growth since the company went public in 1965. And now financial achievements are so expected and predictable that their growth no longer excites the imagination of industry experts. Perhaps only those who still hold shares in McDonald's, bought two decades ago when the company went public, can fully appreciate the network's growth. Their initial investment of buying 100 shares worth $2,250 turned into 37,180 shares worth over $1 million; during this time, there were eleven share splits and once dividends were paid in shares.

But what is most often overlooked is McDonald's impact on the workforce in the American economy. With over 500,000 permanent jobs, McDonald's Systems is one of the largest employers in the United States. Because the chain trains so many high school students for their first job, most workers are quickly promoted to higher paying jobs, which explains why employee turnover at McDonald's restaurants has historically been above 100% in year. But that also explains why McDonald's employed 8 million people in its first 37 years of existence, meaning a whopping 12.5% ​​of the American workforce worked for McDonald's. One out of every fifteen workers in America got their first job at McDonald's. Most of them already work in other places, but it was at McDonald's that they first learned about work routine, work discipline and team organization of work. Now the largest organization that teaches labor is no longer the army, but McDonald's.

However, a simple explanation of the economic impact of McDonald's does not help to show the unknown McDonald's. The most intriguing mystery is precisely the "character" of McDonald's, that is, the people who run the companies and the methods by which they do so. This is where the image of McDonald's sharply diverges from reality. Here is the most successful service company in the country, whose dependence on the service sector is constantly growing, and we really do not know anything about the secret of its success.

These secrets are buried under layers of confusing imagery. Some of McDonald's secrets are almost entirely contained in Kroc's entrepreneurial nature. But for all the monumental contribution that Kroc made to the food service industry, his legend does not at all explain his genius. Kroc has long been portrayed as a visionary who has come up with an entirely new form of catering. Others have portrayed him as a marketing buff who figured out how to mass-sell hamburgers. Kroc is sometimes seen as a strict disciplinarian who treated franchises like children, unifying them to conform to his standards. But above all, he is remembered as an all-powerful founding father and as a vessel of corporate wisdom. This perception is understandable. Even today, there are legions of Ray Kroc supporters at McDonald's. Their reverence for his principles knows no bounds.

And yet, as soon as it comes to listing the reasons for the success of McDonald's, the legend about its founder does not work. Kroc was a dreamer, but he did not invent fast food and he was not the first to discover the MacDonald brothers, who, in fact, were the inventors of fast food. And in marketing, Kroc was not particularly strong. All the projects initiated by Kroc to bring various food products to the market (and their list is quite long) have ended. failure. The McDonald's founder was notorious for swearing at franchises over litter in the parking lot or for leaving the hamburger on hand for too long, but his creativity didn't show up in uniforming the franchises.

Few outside of McDonald's realize that Ray Kroc's brilliance came from the way he selected and motivated his managers, his franchises, and his suppliers. He had a knack for bringing out the best in the people who worked with him. Undoubtedly, the success of Kroc and McDonald's is the story of his own entrepreneurial talent. But it is something more. He achieved tremendous success because he was wise enough and brave enough to rely on hundreds of other entrepreneurs.

Kroc was light years ahead of other contemporary franchisors, but not by the unification of franchises. Instead, he used franchising to unleash the power of operators who own their businesses. While he demanded the strictest production standards, he freed up franchises to sell their services in the way they saw fit, and motivated them by giving them opportunities - never before seen in the franchise business! to get rich before he got rich himself. He made them incredibly competitive by creating the most efficient supply chain in the entire food service industry, which is proof of his competence in perfecting the details of production. And because he built this supply chain, relying solely on fledgling food and equipment suppliers, it acquired the same entrepreneurial personality—and loyalty to McDonald's—as Kroc's franchisees. All three elements of McDonald's systems - franchises, corporate management and suppliers - represent more than 3,700 independent companies, and Kroc skillfully tied them into one family with a common goal.

Kroc's managerial talents were best reflected in the type of organization he built to bring all the elements into a system. Kroc is often seen as the typical corporate founder who towers over his subordinates. In fact, he built a corporation of individuals with natural intelligence, extremely different from each other. The striking uniformity of all fourteen thousands of McDonald's restaurants gives the impression of a corporation with a centralized bureaucracy. Looking from the outside, it's easy to assume that McDonald's restaurants are run by Ray Kroc clones.

But those who work inside the corporation know otherwise. Kroc built the greatest franchised service organization by not dictating to his managers, but by giving them enormous decision-making power. From the outset, his management team was composed of highly diverse personalities, and not at all those who usually survive in the corporate bureaucracy. They weren't organization soldiers—they were corporate entrepreneurs, according to Kroc.

Solutions at McDonald's have always been the product of individual initiative. Ideas have never been averaged by commissions. New directions are born as a result of the empirical process, and new ideas grow from all corners of the system. A key ingredient in Kroc's leadership formula is the willingness to risk failure and admit mistakes. James Kahn, a twenty-year former vice president and twenty-year veteran of McDonald's, graphically described the mismatch between the image and reality of management at McDonald's: In fact, we are a handful of purposeful people who fire many guns, not always hitting the bull's-eye. We make a lot of mistakes, but those mistakes contribute to our success because we learn from them. We are impulsive, we try to move faster than we can, but we also clean up our own dirt.”

The key to McDonald's success is the way it achieves work system uniformity and commitment to that system without sacrificing American individualism and diversity. McDonald's manages by mixing consistency and creativity.

The three elements of McDonald's systems - franchisees, managers and suppliers - are obviously dichotomous with respect to each other. Everyone is rightfully an entrepreneur. Nobody is anybody's master. Ray Kroc's greatest accomplishment is that he found a highly efficient way to make them the cells of a network. Unfortunately, the heroic halo that surrounds Kroc as the founder of McDonald's doesn't accurately represent him. source of all characteristic attributes of the company. The unknown "McDonald's" is not the expression of one single person. It's not even a single company. It is a federation of hundreds of independent entities that have been linked into an intricate web by partnership.

Participants in the system have common economic incentives and common standards of quality, service and cleanliness. But other than that, they