(Movie) The Founder (Ray Kroc McD's Story)

[pds]

Synopsis: The true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman), who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers' speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. Kroc soon maneuvers himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a multi-billion dollar empire.

Has anyone seen it? I never knew the background story of McDonalds and this movie did a great job of telling it within 60 minutes. I think anyone on this forum would appreciate the film.

I'm curious what you guys think of Ray Kroc.

In my opinion, I think Ray is the epitome of a true entrepreneur. He had great vision, persistence , and made difficult decisions (the right ones) when they had to be made to achieve the overall vision he had. He made decisions he believed right for the growth of the business, and has arguably been proven right.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MidwestLandlord]

It's an OK movie.

I was expecting the movie to put Kroc in a bad light for stealing the system from the McDonald's brothers, but the movie seemed to stay unbiased for the most part.

What I didn't like was how they glossed over the building of the franchise process.

Kroc was essentially the founder of modern day franchising. Building a culture, process, systems, and procedures for control over franchisee's at the corporate level. Creating "buy-in" with his franchisee's in almost a cult like fashion.

Instead the movie only has one mention of how Kroc built the franchise system as a "family" (McDonald's still uses this terminology)

In reality this is what Kroc should be famous for, beyond building McDonald's into a multi-billion $ company.

 

[Raoul Duke]

It's an OK movie.

I was expecting the movie to put Kroc in a bad light for stealing the system from the McDonald's brothers, but the movie seemed to stay unbiased for the most part.

What I didn't like was how they glossed over the building of the franchise process.

Kroc was essentially the founder of modern day franchising. Building a culture, process, systems, and procedures for control over franchisee's at the corporate level. Creating "buy-in" with his franchisee's in almost a cult like fashion.

Instead the movie only has one mention of how Kroc built the franchise system as a "family" (McDonald's still uses this terminology)

In reality this is what Kroc should be famous for, beyond building McDonald's into a multi-billion $ company.

Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's: Ray Kroc: 8601300195858: Amazon.com: Books

 

[BradD]

Read the book years ago, great stuff, Kroc was a sales/marketing genius..

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[CPisHere]

The best "entrepreneur" movie I've seen. Of course it's light on details, but it shows ups/downs, and relentlessness needed (though you can say Ray took it too far).

 

[UncleIroh]

It shows Ray as the bad guy. Didnt like it

 

[Brian C.]

The foresight to invest in real estate....

Man, that has to feel good.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[garyjsmith]

I think what made it a good movie was that it moved people to feel and had the human element, like a Pixar movie. He won, he lost, made hard decisions, was backed into a corner, and at times, did the same to others.

In writing this, I was going to bring up 'he did this' and 'he did that,' but that'd be judgmental on my part and in his shoes, I may have done the very same. There were definitely some parts that called for reflection.

 

[Guest3722A]

I like how at the end they show the captioned picture of the real woman who Kroc stole from one of his franchisees and married thereafter where the caption read that she GAVE AWAY his 1.something billion dollar fortune to the Salvation Army after he kicked off. Goes to show how 'loved' Kroc was

 

[garyjsmith]

Is this was an example of Hollywood framing rich producers as evil as mentioned in Unscripted ? Was Ray right in overcoming the people/obstacles that kept him from growing, by being persistent? Steve Jobs seems like a similar character

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[AFMKelvin]

I liked it. It showed how bad service was in most business back than and how McDonald's did something about it.