. . . they are rebels with a cause, offbeat businessmen and women on track with today's consumers. The key to their success: They understand that customers in the 1990s want to be educated, entertained, and coddled, to do right by the earth and by others (especially their children), and to feel rich, even if they're not. Typically in their 40s, they are often veterans of corporate America, whose tumultuous down sizings and right-sizings have tossed a few onto the unemployment line. If Bill Clinton were reinventing cookies or computer software instead of government, he'd be the quintessential Nineties entrepreneur (Fierman, 1993, 80).

This article is quoted because it is one of the 900+ articles in the McDonald's Hamburger U reading list, and it defines exactly how McDonald's feels about its customers: it loves them.

In food technology terms, McDonald's menu is called "Shallow and Broad." The shallow part comes from the fact that McDonald's is beef-oriented (62 percent of the hard products) and sausage supported (27 percent of the hard products) and only 11 percent chicken. It is considered "broad" because it has mechanized the preparation of these items for volume rather than quality. For instance, take o

Divide it instead into five equal parts and you get the "Quarter-Pounder." Salt it, water it, and freeze it and the extra weight comes in. Cooking the hamburger is broken down into 112 different steps in the Hamburger U guidebook, and is complete with such details as how to hold the spatula, how to turn the burgers, and other by-the-number instructions. This kind of efficiency is important, since the McDonald's customer wants speed first, followed by a clean place to sit, followed by some room for the kids. In fact, last on the list is taste.

ne pound of hamburger. Divide it into nine equal parts and you get the basic McDonald's hamburger.

The old phrase, "the customer is always right," seems to have been invented for this company. Customer service is discussed constantly in memos that come from the company headquarters to both its franchisees and company-owned stores. And each store manager is responsible for a 200+ item checklist of daily operations, including cleanliness rules, appearance rules, and so on.

Time is probably McDonald's biggest product, and all the company's sales strategies revolve around that element. The company has data available for how long customers in New England take to drink 8 ounces of coffee as compared to customers in New Mexico. Consultants are constantly checking stores throughout the country, gauging how long customers stand in line, how long it takes a clerk to ring up a sale, how long it takes to deliver the sodas, and so on.

recognized brand in the world - only Coke (which McDonald'