Page 103 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Standards

nation’s dairies. They altered the way ranchers raised beef and
the way the meat industry makes the final product. They
invented the most efficient cooking equipment the food service
industry had ever seen.”

A Culture Steeped in Excellence
I had no way of knowing this at the time, of course, but I was expe-
riencing a very deliberate culture. There’s a saying at McDonald’s:
“Ray dreamt it, and Fred built it.” Take the french fries, a detail
you can clearly taste, famously praised by the chef Julia Child.
Though the standards have changed because of new dietary trends,
it was Fred and his passion for standards that enabled the system
to create McDonald’s fries, celebrated around the world for its con-
sistent excellence. Fred worked closely with growers and pushed
for proper storage temperatures at a time when such standards
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weren’t pursued by restaurant chains. In 1957, Louis Martino, an
owner/operator in Glen Ellyn, Illinois—and the husband of June
Martino, Ray’s original secretary who was keenly instrumental at
working with the early executive team and helping to guide the
company’s growth in those early years—created a food lab, per-
fecting the formula for consistent french fries. That level of research
and development was unheard of for a fledgling fast-food com-
pany. But it was an early indicator of what would follow: the com-
pany’s Innovation Center as well as a restaurant research kitchen
facility where recipes and processes are challenged in the company’s
continued quest for excellence, and for more than 32 years
McDonald’s has had an executive chef on board working the
recipes and exploring new products. All told, the company spent
upward of $3 million developing its renowned french fries in the
mid-1950s—again paving the way for a culture that demanded
nothing but the best. As just one example, today, the beef supply
is inspected from the farm to the restaurant, undergoing 2,000
quality and safety checks before arriving at a restaurant.