Page 154 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

Vendors, too, showed courage, as pointed out by Frank
Kuchuris, a second-generation baker of buns whose father, Louie
Kuchuris, built an 87,000-square-foot plant in 1967 to better
serve McDonald’s, all based on a handshake. While this may
sound foolhardy, Louie, a supplier since 1955, knew the system
and its standards and its leaders—an equation in which he had
great faith, and he was proved right, as the company is now one
of the largest suppliers of buns in the system worldwide, cover-
ing 14 countries, along with the United States.
Peter Grimm, also a long-time bun supplier, shared his
thoughts on courage as it played out in McDonald’s initial his-
tory: “It took courage to do the right thing, even when no one
was looking. And don’t forget, in the early years there weren’t
that many people looking.”
Because we saw so many examples of courage around us, we
didn’t back down. As former McDonald’s executive Debra
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Koenig said: “It would have been easier as a corporate execu-
tive to not take on the tough challenges, one could just close
your eyes, sort of ignore it, and life would have been easier. That
isn’t the culture we grew up in. We grew up to protect the brand,
recognize the standards, and take on the challenges.”
With courage fitting into the corporate equation, we grew up
in the system as young decision makers, and I’d argue that today
most of us look back at the calls we made and say on average,
we did okay. As former CEO Mike Quinlan put it, “When I was
a young field consultant, and then a field service manager, and
supervisor, I had some difficult decisions to make during those
times. And I never took the easy way and, boy, am I glad.”

Fighting the Good Fight
That quest to take on the challenges is what emboldened me as
a 19-year-old night manager to break up a fight between two