Monday, October 03, 2005

Ray Kroc Said It...

Still finding excellent material while reading "Grinding It Out".

In this next quote, Kroc is having a talk with one of his franchisors who is having trouble with the competition being potentially unethical. The competition is a large southern restaurant chain, who is having massive promotions at the one store in their organization, in order to run the local McDonald's franchisor out of business. Ray Kroc writes of his pep talk with that franchisor, who is considering getting lawyers involved to attempt government intervenement:

"Litton, you are getting your ears beat down, and that's not right," I said. "We can agree on that But I'm going to tell you something I feel very strongly about. The thing that has made this country great is our free enterprise system. If we have to resort to this - bringing in the government - to beat our competition, then we deserve to go broke. If we can't do it by offering a better fifteen-cent hamburger, by being better merchandisers, by providing faster service and a cleaner place, then I would rather be broke tomorrow and out of this business and start all over again in something else"

I know McDonald's has been involved in various lawsuits, some about making people obese, and about their french fry cooking methods, but I haven't seen anything about people trying to undercut their prices in an unfair manner. I'm talking about Lawsuits regarding unfair business practices, against McDonald's by either their franchisors or past owners. People actually involved in either owning a franchise, or working at one. I'm not saying there aren't any, undoubtedly there are. They're just not too high profile, in my opinion.

One needs only to visit Scott Larsen's site, and view the staggering amount of lawsuits being brought to court by Amway/Quixtar Distributors.

One thing I've noticed is when you look at the lawsuits, how many lawsuits are due to inferior products, or allegations of how Amway/Quixtar dealt with individual IBO's when there were PRODUCT concerns?

How many are about motivational tools businesses?

Check out Scott Larsen's compiled data on the Amway/Quixtar Lawsuits.

Lots of stuff about the various motivational tools businesses , isn't there?

The people bringing these lawsuits to court aren't too upset about an inferior product being supplied by Amway to them, or their "downline" Also of note, Amway/Quixtar becoming better at distributing their products won't even make a difference in these lawsuits, by that I mean it won't solve any of the problems which led to the lawsuit(s).

Isn't it interesting? I wonder what Amway thinks of this, since their company is the link between the litigants, even when they are not involved in the suit.

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