Fast Food Nation: A Review of Chapters 1-5

Over the past few months, I have been reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. If anyone who has not read this New York Times Best Seller and is reading this blog, I recommend you to read it. This book not only explains how the individual fast food giants came to be, but also how they operate, and how they affect the world we live in today. In this blog I will explain what my opinions on chapters 1-5 of this best selling documentary.

The first chapter of the book began with the life of Carl N. Karcher. It explained how he changed from feed store employee to the founder of Carl Jr.’s fast food chain. It showed how he persevered through many tribulations to start a fast food chain from a little drive-in restaurant in Anaheim, California. Like Carl, many fast food moguls used a system of service that enabled them to deliver speedy and effective service to customers. The development was created by the McDonald brother’s which was called the Speedee Service System. This express service helped the restaurants of the day speed up there service enabling them to serve more people at a more efficient rate. This improvement of service created larger profits and growth within these restaurants.

The second chapter is what I consider a sad reality. It not only explained how Ray Kroc and Walt Disney started their businesses but also how they advertised them. The chapter described how advertisers from McDonald’s set their advertising schemes towards children. They believed that if children could convince their parents to go there continuously, they would. Unfortunately, the chain’s plan worked and led to a giant growth of the company’s profits. Schlosser said that many companies, including fast food chains are even beginning to advertise in public schools. To me, the idea of school advertising is good for funding but has a pro founding affect of our nation's childhood obesity problem. The name of the chapter “Your Trusted Friends” explains the perception that McDonald’s wants to perceive to our society, when they really only care about their profits.

Chapter three was called “Behind the Counter” for a reason. It started out in a town called Colorado Springs, CO. It explained how the town was once small and unfortunately, due to urbanization, it grew into a developmental mess. In the town, many old restaurants were being replaced by McDonald’s and Wendy’s and other fast food giants. The chapter then described the life of a McDonald’s worker. Before reading the book, I never knew how bad the situation was for employees of McDonald’s, and what they went through every day. I learned that a typical McDonald’s worker sometimes work over 8 hour days for minimum wages. Schlosser explained that some workers even have to work overtime for no pay at all. To me, that is a horrible reality. Every worker should get pay for what they did. I also discovered in the book how so many people die at these restaurants because of the poor pay and treatment of the workers. The thing that bugged me the most about this chapter was McDonald’s ability to disband worker’s unions. The employees don’t seem to have a say in anything that goes on in these fast food chains. They seem to be treated like robots more than human beings. This chapter made me sympathize the many unfortunate workers for sitting behind the counters of these businesses.

Within chapter four there seems to be a bright side of the fast food chains. Schlosser describes the story of a injured NHL hockey player who did not have much. He decided to become a Little Cesars franchisee. It helped him to pay the bills but it did not make him wealthy to any degree. In the chapter, it explained how franchising helped to expand the businesses of the fast food moguls. When I first started reading this book, I did not understand at how poorly some franchise owners are payed. Since the franchise makes the franchisee pay for all the capital to start the business, it does not have to pay the price if the restaurant fails. It puts the full brunt of the loss on the franchisee. The hockey player the book introduced at the beginning of the chapter, fell under this stipulation when Little Cesar’s corporate business began failing. If the corporate business would fail, he would lose everything. In the end, a fast food chain's employees and franchisees are the people who take the fall for a business's failure no matter if it corporate or local.

The last chapter I will discuss today is chapter five. It is called “Why the Fries Taste So Good”. It discusses how McDonald's affected the French fry industry and elevate a french fry mogul named J.R. Simplot. The chapter basically describes Simplot’s life and how his company became the supplier of McDonald’s. To me, this chapter was very interesting because it discussed how a specific potato was created solely for McDonald’s fries. Another thing that I discovered is that one of the main reasons for McDonald's choice of Simplot as a supplier was his ability for consistency of frozen potato products. Along with Simplot’s company, the book explained how two other potato companies compete for fast food restaurant contracts driving the price of potatoes down. This is good for the Fast food companies, but gives the potato farmers less income.

Of course there are many more facts in these first five chapters, but I just wanted to get the main points of the chapters to show a view of how great this book is at explaining every facet of the fast food industry.