- Registrado
- 29 de Sep, 2022
You had to clear it with them first. I know one of the annual reports (on archive.org I think) encouraged dining room decoration (within limitations, obviously, probably something decorated with porn pin-ups would be frowned upon), and as far as food went there were tons of one-offs, most of which aren't well-documented, from what I've gathered there were allowed, limited experiments that had to be cleared with corporate and a second menu of additional regional items. These included things like hot dogs (exclusive to Wal-Mart restaurants) and variations of what they already had like the Old Bay Filet-o-Fish.
The last permanent addition to the menu was the McFlurry, which was a franchisee invention from the 1990s (a Canadian one) and he had to basically demonstrate that it was able to fit into their existing operations without problem. A huge part of the problem nowadays is that the mom-and-pop franchisees are disappearing and replaced with large multi-unit operators (which McDonald's explicitly tried to avoid in the early days) which aren't going to rock the boat when it comes to new ideas...and even in the best of times, it was making sure that Ray Kroc wasn't pissed off in the process.
There's a funny story about when the Egg McMuffin was introduced, the franchisee had a bunch of slides prepared with sales information and increases, but Kroc was sold on the samples provided to the executives as part of the presentation, eating two even after having lunch.
