Page 58 - Everything I Know About Business I Learned

Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s

to save McDonald’s. Only true believers would rescue a parent
company in the fashion of Lou Perlman and the other suppliers,
including Continental Coffee, Honey Hill Dairy, Mary Ann Bak-
ing, and Interstate Foods. The deep relationship that the com-
pany shares with vendors today was in full force in McDonald’s
initial history.
Peter Grimm, a longtime bun supplier and distributor for
McDonald’s, had an interesting perspective on the relationship:
“At most companies, I am a supplier; but at McDonald’s, I am
important. Big difference. Vendors to other organizations come
and go, vendors aren’t partners. We were just a vendor to the
other companies we worked with. I have never been in another
place where a relationship like this exists.”

Got Your Back
28
One of the recurring comments to come up in many of the inter-
views with staff and licensees was the notion that support was
always there when needed. The entire premise behind franchis-
ing is the concept that licensees are in business for themselves,
but not by themselves. Mike Roberts, former president of
McDonald’s, put it this way: “You execute your job and you do
it in the highest level you are capable of, and we [the company]
have your back covered.” Sam Munroe, a 14-store operator in
Houston, felt equally supported: “You always feel [that] if you
do what has to be done in your store or stores to the best of your
ability, you know that you will not be left hanging out alone.
The relationships that you develop during that period are the
relationships that you will have the rest of your life.”
Retired owner/operator Irv Klein believes McDonald’s early
devotion to franchisees made the system what it is today. “If
they had to make a decision, and the decision was what was best
for the corporation or what was best for the operators, they