Movie Day with Business Leadership Club
—By Mathew Medeiros
On November 19th, the Business Leadership Club held our second event of the semester with a fun, club movie day. We got together on Zoom to watch the Founder, a true story about McDonald’s and how the corporation built its global empire.
Our meeting started off with Professor Kourani, our club advisor, welcoming and introducing everyone to our community and setting the tone for the club. “Be sure to grab your popcorn and get ready to enjoy a great movie,” Professor Kourani announced as our club members began trickling in one at a time.
In total we had around 17 students attend which is a great turn-out; our club President Susana Igne and Vice President Matthew Medeiros, myself, were present as well. It was a great event because the movie attracted new faces, brought people together, and taught everyone something new.
The Founder is the true story of a struggling salesman from Illinois, Ray Kroc, who met Mac and Dick McDonald, the original owners of the first McDonald which at the time was a small burger joint in Southern California in the 1950’s. From there, we see how McDonald’s separated itself from other restaurants at the time with their unique “speedy system” which allowed for more fluency and quicker customer service.
Ray Kroc was impressed with this system and saw franchise potential, eventually striking up a contract with the reluctant McDonald brothers to open a McDonald’s on the east coast. This is where we see a change in demeanor in Mr. Kroc, becoming power-hungry, trying to grow bigger and bigger while Mac and Dick were much more conservative with their family-oriented policies.
By the end of the movie, we see that the McDonald’s we all know and love today was actually started as a real-estate company! This was Ray Kroc’s idea to undermine the McDonald brothers, by owning the land of which the new McDonald’s would open up. Having franchised nationally and globally, Mr. Kroc was acting like the new boss under the nose of Mac and Dick. Building this capital and his hunger to expand and franchise eventually puts Ray Kroc in a position to buy the McDonald’s name from the brothers, as he became a real-estate tycoon buying out the brothers’s small, local burger joint.
Personally, I had no idea this was how McDonald’s was started and found it very interesting. A good take-away from this movie was the importance of owning land and real estate, for that was the only way Ray Kroc was able to gain the capital to own the corporation.
Many of our club members found the movie not only interesting but engaging for its many business lessons and the hunger you see from Ray Kroc to keep on growing. Overall a great business movie and we were very satisfied to hear our members loved it as well.
If you have any more questions about our next meeting or request information about the Business Leadership Club, please contact our club advisor Professor Kourani at KKourani@pccc.edu or our BLC email BLC@pccc.edu.