Word: mcdonaldization
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None of that bothers McDonald...
Last year the chain's stores-now numbering 4,230-rang up sales of $3.1 billion, 24% more than in 1975. Most of that was kept by franchise operators, but their rent and royalty payments, plus sales of company-owned stores, gave McDonald's $1.2 billion in revenues; the company converted $110 million into profit, about 27% above that of a year earlier. That was enough to permit the company, which had plowed all previous profits back into expansion, to declare its first cash dividends (2½? a quarter). In early May McDonald's signs will...
There are some easily identifiable reasons for McDonald's success, though. One is that in recent years inflation has jacked up the cost of meals eaten at home more than of those eaten out, spurring a growing willingness among Americans to eat almost anything so long as they do not have to cook it themselves. Industry marketing studies indicate that in ten years fully one-half of the nation's food budget will be spent for meals eaten outside the home, v. one-third spent now. McDonald's expects to benefit handsomely from this trend...
Loyal Crowd. McDonald's has also been willing to change its stores and products. Breakfasts, introduced last year, have won an older and loyal crowd. In one Southwestern store the local manager opened a drive-through window to serve G.I.s from a nearby base who were forbidden to enter any public place in their fatigues; the chain has now opened such windows in 400 stores and plans them in another 500. Says Schmitt: "A woman will drive through in housecoat and curlers, when she wouldn't come into the store that...
...McDonald's tries to turn its stores into homes away from home. One restaurant in Villa Park, Ill., caters 600 birthday parties a month in a special room for children whose parents do not want kids spilling ice cream on the dining-room rug. Most stores now have "activities representatives" who organize kiddie and senior citizen programs and manage nearby playgrounds; this approach has disarmed communities that initially objected to a McDonald's in the neighborhood. In general, says President Schmitt, "we used to think you needed 50,000 people to support a McDonald...