The Founder (2016)

John Carroll Lynch: Mac McDonald

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mac McDonald : Dick. We will never beat him. We will never be rid of him.

• Ray Kroc : While you two boys were content to sit back and become a couple of also-rans... I wanna take the future. I wanna win. And you don't get there by being some "aw shucks" guy sap. There's no place in business for people like that. Business is war. It's dog eat dog, rat eat rat. If my competitor were drowning, I'd walk over and put a hose right in his mouth. Can you say the same?

  Mac McDonald : [pause]  I can't. Nor would I want to.

  Ray Kroc : Hence, your single location.

  Mac McDonald : We want you out of this company, Ray.

  Ray Kroc : Mac, how do you propose we do that?

  Mac McDonald : We will sue you, whatever it takes.

  Ray Kroc : And you'd probably win. But you can't afford to sue me. I'd bury you in court costs alone. Mac, I'm the president and C.E.O. of a major corporation with land holdings in 17 states... You run a burger stand in the desert. I'm national. You're fucking local.

  [Mac collapses] 

• Dick McDonald : A hothead like that, you don't know what he's capable of.

  Mac McDonald : It's all bluster, Dick. His bark is worse than his bite.

  Dick McDonald : That's what Neville Chamberlain said.

• Mac McDonald : This is not your company, Ray!

• Ray Kroc : Let me explain something to you, Dick... You boys have full say over what goes on inside the restaurants. But outside, above, below... your authority stops at the door. And at the floor. All right?

  Mac McDonald : What is he saying?

  Dick McDonald : He's buying the land.

  Mac McDonald : Our land?

• Mac McDonald : [Giving Kroc his first tour of McDonald's]  Speed. That's the name of the game. The first stop for every McDonald's hamburger is the grill. Manned by two cooks, whose sole job it is to cook those all-beef beauties to perfection. Meanwhile, as the patty cooks, our dressers get the buns ready. Watch out. Burger crossing!

  McDonald's Employees : Burger crossing!

  Mac McDonald : Every McDonald's burger has two pickles, a pinch of onions, and a precise shot of ketchup and mustard.

  Ray Kroc : [Points to the ketchup and mustard despensers]  Now, where did you get those?

  Mac McDonald : We made them.

  Ray Kroc : Made them?

  Mac McDonald : Yes, custom-built. The whole kitchen is. Next, this is the finishing station where we put the whole thing together. And...

  [Leads Ray to the end of the line, holding up a wrapped hamburger] 

  Mac McDonald : Voila! A fresh, delicious burger from grill to counter in 30 seconds.

• Mac McDonald : [telling Kroc the story behind starting McDonald's]  Well, we were young and hungry. There wasn't a job to be had in all of New Hampshire, so we decided to pack our bags and head west, to Hollywood. I wanted to be in the movie business, and Dick, well, he wanted to be...

  Dick McDonald : Employed.

  Mac McDonald : So, we landed jobs at Columbia Pictures, driving trucks.

  Ray Kroc : Huh.

  Mac McDonald : And after a few years, we've had enough saved to buy our own little piece of show business-a beautiful little movie theatre in Glendora, which would've been swell-except for the timing: it was September of '29.

  Ray Kroc : [cringes]  Oooh.

  Mac McDonald : One minute, we're screening The Gold Diggers of Broadway, and the next it's "Brother, can you spare a dime?"

  Dick McDonald : I couldn't.

• Mac McDonald : So, we moved the restaurant, we're setting up shop, but now we wanna do a few tweaks, because now it's 1940 and drive-ins are all the rage. I mean, they're the hottest thing going, and I say, "Dick, we gotta get in on this," and Dick says...

  Dick McDonald : Okay.

  Mac McDonald : And two months later, we opened for business: McDonald's Famous BBQ. 27-item menu, uniformed waitresses, bring your food right to the car, and it goes gangbusters. We're going "great guns!" But then, sales started to level off.

  Dick McDonald : The drive-in model, as we've learned, has a few built-in problems.

  Ray Kroc : Tell me about it.

  Dick McDonald : I mean, for starters, there's the customer issue. Drive-ins tend to attract, shall we say, a less-than-desirable clientele.

  Mac McDonald : Teenagers.

  Dick McDonald : Hot-rodders and hooligans. Juvenile delinquents in blue jeans. And then, there's the service. It takes forever and a day for your food to arrive, and when it finally does...

  Ray Kroc : It's usually wrong.

  Dick McDonald : Yeah, the carhops are too busy dodging gropes to remember that you wanted strawberry phosphate, not cherry.

  Ray Kroc : Well, that's a thing to remember at all.

  Mac McDonald : And then, there's the expenses. The huge payroll due to the large staff required, dishes being constantly broken or stolen.

  Dick McDonald : Tremendous overhead.

  Mac McDonald : So, one day, Dick has a realization. He sees that the bulk of our sales are in only three items: Hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks.

  Dick McDonald : 87%.

  Mac McDonald : So, we say to ourselves, let's focus on what sells. And that's exactly what we do. Brisket, gone. Tamales, gone. But, we don't stop there. We look at everything. What else don't we need?

  Dick McDonald : Turns out, quite a lot.

  Mac McDonald , Dick McDonald : Carhops?

  Dick McDonald : Walk up to a window, get your food yourself.

  Mac McDonald : Dishes?

  Dick McDonald : All-paper packaging, disposable.

  Mac McDonald : Cigarette machines, jukeboxes.

  Dick McDonald : Drive out the riff-raff.

  Ray Kroc : Creating a family-friendly environment.

  Mac McDonald : But that's not enough.

  Ray Kroc : Alright.

  Mac McDonald : See, our whole lives, we'd piggy-backed off other people's ideas. We wanted something that wasn't just different, it had to be better. It needed to be ours, and that's what brings us to the biggest cut of all.

  Ray Kroc : Which was?

  Mac McDonald : The wait.

  Dick McDonald : Orders ready in 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.