The Founder

Quote: rxwine

When I was in grade school they had these rubber straps you could put around books. I seem to remember them being a bear to put on if you had more than a couple books though. Or you carried them loose and one or two would slowly slip out. PItA,

Backpack would have been much better, but I think the only packs made were used in camping or for the military.

That is why backpacks took off, they worked. FWIW when I was a kid you usually got them at the Army/Navy store. Later the mainstream stores got into them.

Quote: Evenbob

Hikers and military were the only ones using
backpacks. If I wore one to school in 1965
I would have been laughed out of there.
When I started seeing kids wear them years
later I thought they looked like idiots. Still
do.

When I started school backpacks were seen as very dorky. However, they started to catch on as was in high school. It was still cool to be the rebel who never carried anything school related around, as my brother did. Personally, I lugged several books every day, and sometimes a trumpet, back and forth between home and school. Was one of the first to use a backpack. My cool factor was so low anyway I didn't have much to lose by using one.

Quote: Wizard

When I started school backpacks were seen as very dorky.

I don't know why but they still look
dorky to me. Like fanny packs. My
daughter wears a fanny pack and
looks like a dork. Backpacks on
kids make them look like retards
to me. Don't they give kids lockers
anymore? That's where I kept all
my stuff, I didn't have to lug it
around on my back all day like
a Himalayan Sherpa..

I would think that more schools would have e-books today.

Quote: Evenbob

I don't know why but they still look
dorky to me. Like fanny packs. My
daughter wears a fanny pack and
looks like a dork. Backpacks on
kids make them look like retards
to me. Don't they give kids lockers
anymore? That's where I kept all
my stuff, I didn't have to lug it
around on my back all day like
a Himalayan Sherpa..

The middle schools and high schools still have lockers. Backpacks were always mostly about taking stuff between home and school. When I went to UCSB backpacks were the order of the day. In the Ortega Dining Commons there were shelves for backpacks because you couldn't take them in (lest kids steal even more food) and there were so many it could be hard to find your own.

Quote: Pacomartin

I would think that more schools would have e-books today.

In high school a lot of them are. I don't see my 15-year-old son with physical text books much.

Quote: Wizard

When I sold my sites it was certainly bittersweet to give up my baby but the price made that pill pretty easy to swallow. In retrospect, no regrets at all.

Colonel Sanders famously regretted selling KFC for just $2 million.

Quote: Evenbob

Croc always adamantly
denied it ever happened.

Even if the 1% handshake deal never happened, the fact that Kroc opened a McDonald's across the street from the brothers' burger stand in San Bernadino (actually it was 1 block away) showed what a spiteful, sleazy businessman Kroc was.

And the McDonalds brothers were definitely right that the instant powder milkshakes weren't as good as the real thing.

Quote: reno

Even if the 1% handshake deal never happened, the fact that Kroc opened a McDonald's across the street from the brothers' burger stand in San Bernadino (actually it was 1 block away) showed what a spiteful, sleazy businessman Kroc was.

What the movie does not show is how the brothers treated Kroc as a cash register. They approved not 1 modification to the stores even for obvious things like the "winterfront" on norhtern stores (not shown in movie, Kroc's store now a museum has one.) To Kroc, their refusal to include their store was the last straw.

In today's dollars, Kroc paid about $22MM. Store count was around 200. Round it to 220. That is $100K per store. To get that in royalties, each store would have had to do $20MM in business. Talking a decade or more. Even with trailing growth, the brothers got an amazing deal when they kept their store!

It was a good market so I have no problem with this one.

Quote:

And the McDonalds brothers were definitely right that the instant powder milkshakes weren't as good as the real thing.

No, not as good as the real thing, the reason for the swithc was cost and space. It was not a powder, btw, but a mix-in-a-box. I didn't get that about the movie, who would think they would make milkshakes from one-serving bags?

Without Korc, Burger Chef would probably have won the Franchise War of 1961-1975. They were within a few stores at one point and with dominance might have been spun off as an independent outfir.

Quote: AZDuffman

What the movie does not show is how the brothers treated Kroc as a cash register.

The movie is a Lib whitewash of what really
happened. The brothers opposed Croc every
step of the way, even going behind his back
to make deals. They had huge egos and were
very money hungry, they forced Croc to go
medieval on their hick asses eventually. They
were thrilled with the money they eventually
got, but just like Col Sanders, when the
businesses they sold took off and became huge,
they thought they got screwed.