
McDonald's Has a Chef? - robg
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1963755-1,00.html
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larrywright
The thing that stands out here is the number of people who have to be on board
before a product makes it to market, and how they focus group everything. Very
Microsoft-like. Is there a fast-food equivalent to Apple?

It also reminds me of this article I saw the other day (horribly alarmist
title aside): [http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/45380/4-shocking-
sec...](http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/45380/4-shocking-secrets-
about-fast-food/)

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camccann
_Is there a fast-food equivalent to Apple?_

This is going to sound ridiculously clichéd, but could probably make a case
for Starbucks. A lot their success came from having and marketing a
consistent, stylized aesthetic, they got a lot of flack for being expensive,
they unified and created a "standard" of sorts in a market that was fragmented
and not seen as interesting (i.e., coffee shops vs. MP3 players and online
music stores), their aesthetic choices tend to get adopted by competitors...

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philwelch
The essential ingredient to Apple isn't the consistent, stylized aesthetic, or
the expense, or any of that. The essential ingredient is a charismatic
dictator who says "this is what we're doing" and makes the company focus on
it. It's usually a very _bad_ business model, because dictatorship almost
never works, but it does depend on the dictator.

And there's also no good way of choosing a dictator--someone with Jobs' force
of will either makes himself the dictator, or you have to use some sort of
collaborative process. No one at Apple sat down and said "let's put Steve in
charge again", Steve heard that they were shopping for an operating system,
called them up, and spent the next year or two taking over the company.

And if someone makes himself your dictator, he's not always very good at it.
Jobs himself almost ran two companies into the ground before his business
sense was properly calibrated. You don't just have to have a dictator, you
have to have a dictator who knows what to do.

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JanezStupar
Most of us agree that enlightened absolutism is the best form of government.
However, so far nobody solved the problem of ensuring a steady supply of good
kings.

By the way - its not just apple. Any company is essentially a dictatorship.
But most of dictators are scared or clueless so they rely on layers of
committees upon layers of committees to do their work.

What I took from the article is that getting a product to market at McDonalds
is hard - because of logistics behind getting all the ingredients to the
restaurants in time AND getting through all the layers of people who don't
want to take (or cant) responsibility.

Do I see an end for the McDonalds?

~~~
philwelch
"By the way - its not just apple. Any company is essentially a dictatorship.
But most of dictators are scared or clueless so they rely on layers of
committees upon layers of committees to do their work."

That's something else--I don't know the best word for it, but something like
aristocracy or something. In fact, a lot of "corporate politics" boil down to,
essentially, squabbling lords and nobles playing for power.

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dantheman
I'd love to read some detailed reports on how operations research impacts food
selection and the workflow of the cooks at mcdonalds. Does anyone know if
anything about this has been released?

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davidmurphy
The Mac Wrap is the worst thing I have ever tasted at any McDonalds, by a huge
margin. Just...weird.

That said, I am glad they are innovating -- other things introduced in the
past decade or so are quite good (and the Big & Tasty is now just $1.79 where
I live -- perhaps half the price of what it used to be.)

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andrewbrown
I'm a burger king fan and always will be. I went to Burger King in Barcelona
on New Years Eve, and I scarified my facebook friends for a whopper, but not
realizing that the promotion was only for the States. Great memories

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PostOnce
They've learned a few things since the Arch Deluxe fiasco.

