CASE STUDY Mc Donald’s India
Very few companies can claim success and fast growth like that of McDonald’s, anywhere in the world. With more that 20,000 outlets around the world and over 6 new outlets opening every day somewhere in the world, McDonald’s chain of franchised fast food restaurants can claim a unique place in the pages of history of business. McDonald’s is the brain child of one ambitions old man, Ray Kroc, who at the age of 57 years was finally able to realize his life long dream of becoming rich. In 1954, he had visited a small fast food restaurant in San Bernardina, California, which had a very simple menu of burgers, french fries and soda, served in paper cups.
The speed of service and quality of food and friendly personalized service. McDonald’s has become a truly multinational company and has gone global with outlets in most countries including nearly 1300 outlets in Japan alone. The largest and the busiest McDonald’s restaurant is in Moscow, Russia with a seating capacity of over 4,000. An outlet is being opened in China and October 1996, India became another addition where McDonald’s opened its doors for the first time. In every country, McDonald’s hamburgers contain 100% beef except in India where beef eating is not culturally acceptable among the Hindus. Accordingly, the hamburger is called Maharajah Mac instead of the usual Big Mac. The quality of food is so consistently high and maintained high that the company could not find potatoes of acceptable quality in the entire country of Russia. Accordingly,
potatoes are flown from Idaho, in U.S.A. to maintain the high quality of French fries. Even in India, the ingredients of high quality are located where these can be found. The mutton, for examples, comes from AlKabeer of Hyderabad, fresh lettuce from Ooty Farms in Tamil Nadu, cheese from Dynamix Dairies in Maharashtra and sesame seed buns from Cremica Industries of Phillaur in Punjab. The Potatoes for the french fries are obtained from Tarai Foods of Uttar Pradesh. This, for McDonald’s located in New Delhi. For any enterprise to succeed, a good management team is highly essential, no matter how high the quality of the product may be. An organization with bad management is bound to fail. With this fact in mind, all managers employed at McDonald’s are given proper management training at Hamburger University in America, operated by McDonald Corporation. In that respect, the Indian entrepreneurs, Mr.
Vikram Bakshi and Amit Jatia both received full management team. With such well trained management team, family oriented concept, high quality food and clean surroundings, it is most unlikely that any of the McDonald’s restaurants will ever fail.
Questions 1) What do you think are the causes of such phenomenal success and fast growth of McDonald’s? 2) If you had to describe the business philosophy of Ray Kroc, what would it be? 3) Why do you think, it took so long to accept a McDonald’s restaurant on Indian soil?
4) Do you think that fast food and quick lunches would become a trend for Indians who generally take a long lunch break and where many businessmen go home for their lunch? Explain.
