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The Founder Dvd

Ray, a salesman, meets the owners of McDonald’s, a burger joint in Southern California. He realises the potential of the place and decides to make it the biggest restaurant business in the world.

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The Founder is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by John Lee Hancock and written by Robert Siegel. Starring Michael Keaton as businessman Ray Kroc, the film portrays the story of his creation of the McDonald’s fast-food restaurant chain. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch co-star as McDonald’s founders Richard and Maurice McDonald.

The film premiered at Arclight Hollywood on December 7, 2016 and was released theatrically in the United States on January 20, 2017 by The Weinstein Company. It grossed $24 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Keaton’s performance.

Plot

In 1954, Ray Kroc is a traveling milkshake machine salesman. While he has a supportive wife named Ethel and has saved enough to live a comfortable life in Arlington Heights, Illinois, he craves more. Ray also observes that many of the drive-in restaurants that he tries to sell to are inefficiently run. After learning that a drive-in in San Bernardino is ordering an unusually large number of milkshake mixers, Ray drives to California to see it. What he finds is McDonald’s—a highly popular walk-up restaurant with fast service, high-quality food, disposable packaging and a family-friendly atmosphere.

Ray meets with the two McDonald brothers, Maurice “Mac” and Richard “Dick” McDonald. They give Ray a tour of the kitchen and he notes the employees’ strong work ethic. Ray is astounded with the restaurant, and takes the brothers to dinner. They tell him the origin story of McDonald’s and how they came to design their “fast food” system. The next day, Ray suggests that the brothers franchise the restaurant, but they hesitate, pointing out that they already tried, only to have encountered absentee franchisees who were lackadaisical in upholding their system. Ray persists and eventually convinces the brothers to allow him to lead their franchising efforts on the condition that he agrees to a strict contract, which requires all changes be subject to the McDonald brothers’ approval.

Initially, Ray begins building a McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, while attempting to entice wealthy investors (specifically fellow members at his country club) to open franchises, but encounters the same poor management ethic which doomed the original franchise efforts. Eventually Ray hits on the idea of franchising to middle-class investors, who have more incentive to be hands-on and are willing to follow the McDonald’s formula. This proves successful, and new franchises begin opening across the Midwest, with Ray representing himself as the creator of McDonald’s. During this time, Ray meets Rollie Smith, an upscale restaurant owner in Minnesota who wishes to invest, and his wife Joan, to whom Ray is immediately attracted.

Despite his success, Ray begins to encounter financial difficulties as his share of franchise profits are limited due to his contract, which the McDonald brothers decline to renegotiate. Meanwhile, the owners are encountering higher than expected costs, particularly for refrigeration of large quantities of ice cream for milkshakes. Joan suggests a powdered milkshake as a way to avoid these costs, but the brothers consider it degrading to their food quality. Ray is called to the bank as his mortgage is past due, but this is overheard by Harry Sonneborn, a financial consultant, who requests to review Ray’s books. Sonneborn realizes that the real profit opportunity is in providing real estate to the franchisees, which will not only provide a revenue stream, but give Ray leverage over his franchisees and the brothers. Ray incorporates a new company, Franchise Realty Corporation, and attracts new investors. This allows him to open new restaurants without the brothers approval. This upsets the brothers and emboldens Ray: he increasingly defies them by circumventing their authority and providing powdered milkshakes to all franchisees. Ray also divorces Ethel, who gets all his assets except any shares in his business.

Ray renames his company the McDonald’s Corporation and demands to be released from his contract and buy the McDonald brothers out, the news of which sends Mac into diabetic shock. Ray visits him in the hospital and offers a blank check to settle their business. The brothers agree to a $2.7 million lump sum payment (equivalent to $26 million in 2020) , ownership of their original restaurant in San Bernardino, and a 1% annual royalty, but when the time comes to finalize the agreement, Ray refuses to include the royalty in the settlement and instead offers it as a handshake deal. Afterwards, Dick asks Ray why he had to take over their business, when he could have easily stolen their idea and recreated it. Ray argues that the true value of McDonald’s is the name itself, which expresses all the attributes of Americana (as opposed to his Czech Slavic-sounding name of Kroc).

The McDonald brothers are forced to take their own name off the original restaurant and Ray opens a new McDonald’s franchise directly across the street, finally putting the brothers out of business. Later in 1970, Ray is preparing a speech where he praises himself for his success and that he was able to achieve his success through persistence, and not through talent or a strong work ethic, in his elaborate mansion with his new wife, Joan.

An epilogue reveals that the McDonald brothers were never paid their royalties, which would have been in the area of $100 million a year, and that every day McDonald’s feeds approximately 1% of the Earth’s population.

Cast

Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc
Nick Offerman as Richard McDonald
John Carroll Lynch as Maurice McDonald
Linda Cardellini as Joan Smith
B. J. Novak as Harry J. Sonneborn
Laura Dern as Ethel Kroc
Justin Randell Brooke as Fred Turner
Kate Kneeland as June Martino
Patrick Wilson as Rollie Smith
Wilbur Fitzgerald as Jerry Cullen

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