Fast Food Nation: What The All-American Meal is Doing to the World (41 page)

The site encouraged kids:
See Matthew McAllester, “Life in Cyberspace: What’s McDonald’s Doing with Kids’ E-mail Responses?”
Newsday
, July 20, 1997.

46
“They cannot protect themselves”:
Quoted in Linda E. Demkovich, “Pulling the Sweet Tooth of Children’s TV Advertising,”
National Journal
, January 7, 1978.

“We are delighted by the FTC’s reasonable recommendation”:
Quoted in A. O. Sulzberger, Jr., “FTC Staff Urges End to Child-TV Ad Study,”
New York Times
, April 3, 1981.

about 80 percent of all television viewing by kids:
Cited in Steve McClellan and Richard Tedesco, “Children’s TV Market May Be Played Out,”
Broadcasting & Cable
, March 1, 1999.

about twenty-one hours a week:
Cited in “Policy Statement: Media Education,” American Academy of Pediatrics, August 1999.

more time watching television than doing:
Cited in “Policy Statement: Children, Adolescents, and Television,” American Academy of Pediatrics, October 1995.

more than thirty thousand TV commercials:
Cited in Mary C. Martin, “Children’s Understanding of the Intent of Advertising: A Meta-Analysis,”
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing
, Fall 1997

one-quarter of American children:
Cited in Lisa Jennings, “Baby, Hand Me the Remote,”
Scripps Howard News Service
, October 13, 1999.

47
annually spend about $3 billion on television:
Interview with Lynn Fava, Competitive Media Reporting.

47
now operates more than eight thousand playgrounds
…
Burger King has more than two thousand:
Cited in “Fast Food and Playgrounds: A Natural Combination,” promotional material, Playlandservices, Inc.

“
Playlands bring in children
”: Ibid.

about 90 percent of American children:
Cited in Rod Taylor, “The Beanie Factor,”
Brandweek
, June 16, 1997.

“But when it gets down to brass tacks”:
Sam Bradley and Betsey Spethmann, “Subway’s Kid Pack: The Ties That Sell,”
Brandweek
, October 10, 1994.

According to a publication called
Tomart’s
:
Meredith Williams,
Tomart’s Price Guide to McDonald’s Happy Meal Collectibles
(Dayton, Ohio: Tomart Publications, 1995).

one of the most successful promotions:
The story of McDonald’s Teenie Beanie Baby promotion can be found in Taylor, “The Beanie Factor.”

48
“We see this as a great opportunity”:
Quoted in “McDonald’s Launches Second Animated Video in Series Starring Ronald McDonald,” press release, McDonald’s Corporation, January 21, 1999.

Ball told the
Hollywood Reporter: See T. L. Stanley,
Hollywood Reporter
, May 26, 1998.

49
Some industry observers thought Disney:
See Thomas R. King, “Mickey May Be the Big Winner in Disney-McDonal’s Alliance,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 24, 1996.

the McDonald’s Corporation had turned away offers:
See Monci Jo Williams, “Mc-Donald’s Refuses to Plateau,”
Fortune
, November 12, 1984.

“A lot of people can’t get used to the fact”:
Quoted in James Bates, “You Want First-Run Features with Those Fries?”
Newsday
, May 11, 1997.

51
gaining it just $37,500 a year:
Cited in Eric Dexheimer, “Class Warfare,”
Denver Westword
, February 6, 1997.

For $12,000, a company got… Within a year, DeRose had nearly tripled:
Ibid.

52
“Discover your own river of revenue”:
Quoted in Molnar, “Sponsored Schools and Commercialized Classrooms,” p. 28.

“if it weren’t for the acute need for funds”:
Quoted in Brian McTaggart, “Selling Our Schools,”
Houston Chronicle
, August 10, 1997.

53
“You’ve reached Grapevine-Colleyville”:
Quoted in G. Chambers Williams III, “Fliers May Be Seeing Ads on Roofs of Grapevine-Colleyville Schools,”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
, March 4, 1997.

Dan DeRose tells reporters:
See “The Art of the Deal,”
Food Management
, February 1998.

“
In Kansas City they were getting 67 cents a kid
”: Quoted in Constance L. Hays, “Today’s Lesson: Soda Rights,”
New York Times
, May 21, 1999.

“There are critics to penicillin”:
Quoted in Tracy Correa, “Campus Market: Corporate America Is Coming to Fresno-Area Schools with Ads That Target Children and Their Parents,”
Fresno Bee
, November 9, 1998.

Thus far, DeRose has been responsible for:
Voice mail from Dan DeRose.

control 90.3 percent of the U.S. market:
Cited in G. Pascal Zachary, “Let’s Play Oligopoly! Why Giants Like Having Other Giants Around,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 8, 1999.

53
about fifty-six gallons per person:
Cited in Greg W. Prince, “The Year of Living Dangerously,”
Beverage World
, March 15, 2000.

Coca-Cola has set itself the goal:
See Dean Foust, “Man on the Spot: Nowadays Things Go Tougher at Coke,”
Business Week
, May 3, 1999.

“Influencing elementary school students”:
Kent Steinriede, “Sponsorship scorecard 1999,”
Beverage Industry
, January 1999.

54
“
We at McDonald’s are thankful
”: Quoted in Ernest Holsendorph, “Keeping McDonald’s Out in Front: ‘Gas’ Is No Problem; Chicken May Be Served,”
New York Times
, December 30, 1973.

McDonald’s sells more Coca-Cola:
Cited in “Welcome to McDonald’s.”

about $4.25 a gallon:
According to
Business Week
, Burger King annually pays Coke $170 million for 40 million gallons of syrup. That works out to a cost of about $4.25 a gallon — or 3.3 cents an ounce. It is safe to assume that McDonald’s, an even larger customer, buys its syrup at a price that is equivalent, if not lower. See Foust, “Man on the Spot.”

A medium Coke that sells for $1.29:
The standard soft drink ratio is one part syrup to five parts carbonated water. A small Coke at McDonald’s contains about 2.6 ounces of syrup; a medium Coke, about 3.5 ounces. For the composition of soft drinks, see Lauren Curtis, “Pop Art,”
Food Product Design
, January 1998.

55
A 1997 study:
Cited in Jacobson, “Liquid Candy,” p. 10.

“
It’s our responsibility to make it clear
”: Quoted in Martha Groves, “Serving Kids… Up to Marketers,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 14, 1999.

The principal said Cameron could have been suspended:
See Frank Swoboda, “Pepsi Prank Fizzles at School’s Coke Day,”
Washington Post
, March 26, 1998.

“I don’t consider this a prank”:
Quoted ibid.

“the earth could benefit rather than be harmed”:
Quoted in Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”

56
About twenty million elementary school students:
Cited in “Pizza Hut Book It! Awards $50,000 to Elementary Schools,”
PR Newswire
, June 6, 2000.

The group claims that its publications:
See Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”

“Now you can enter the classroom”
: Quoted in Alex Molnar, “Advertising in the Classroom,”
San Diego Union-Tribune
, March 10, 1993.

“Through these materials, your product”:
Quoted in Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”

eight million of the nations middle, junior, and high school:
Cited in “Prepared Testimony of Ralph Nader before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,”
Federal New Service
, May 20, 1999.

At least twenty school districts:
Cited in Diane Brockett, “School Cafeterias Selling Brand-Name Junk Food,”
Education Digest
, October 1, 1998.

The American School Food Service Association estimates:
Cited in Dan Morse, “School Cafeterias are Enrolling as Fast-Food Franchisees,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 28, 1998.

“We try to be more like the fast food places”:
Quoted in Janet Bingham, “Corporate Curriculum: And Now a Word, Lesson, Lunch, from a Sponsor,”
Denver Post
, February 22, 1998.

57
The Coca-Cola deal that DD Marketing negotiated:
For the story of District 11’s
shortfall, see Cara DeGette, “The Real Thing: Corporate Welfare Comes to the Classroom,”
Colorado Springs Independent
, November 25-December 1, 1998.

For the history of the Pikes Peak region, I relied on Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith,
A Colorado History
(Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing, 1995); Patricia Farris Skolout,
Colorado Springs History A to Z
(Colorado Springs: Patricia Farris Skolout, 1992); Judith Reid Finley,
Time Capsule 1900: Colorado Springs a Century Ago
(Colorado Springs: Pastword Publishing, 1998); and two entertaining books by Marshall Sprague,
Money Mountain: The Story of Cripple Creek Gold
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), and
Newport in the Rockies: The Life and Good Times of Colorado Springs
(Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1987). Markusen et al.,
The Rise of the Gunbelt
, contains an excellent chapter entitled “Space Mountain: Generals and Boosters Build Colorado Springs,” pp. 174–210.

For the driving forces behind sprawl, I relied principally on: F. Caid Benfield, Matthew D. Raimi, Donald D. T. Chen,
Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl Is Undermining America’s Environment, Economy, and Social Fabric
(Washington, D.C.: National Resources Defense Council, 1999); James Howard Kunstler,
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape
(New York: Touchstone, 1994); Philip Langdon,
A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). John C. Melaniphy’s
Restaurant and Fast Food Site Selection
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992) helped me see how the economic needs of the fast food chains have directly contributed to the nationwide spread of sprawl. Two site selection experts explained how the latest geographic information systems combine satellite data, census data, and market research to determine the best location for a new fast food restaurant: Libby Duane, the marketing director at SRC LLC, whose “Site Analyzer” is used by Church’s Chicken and Popeye’s, among other chains; and Elliott Olson, the chairman of the Dakota Worldwide Corporation, which distributes a PC version of the Quintillion software developed by McDonald’s. Mr. Olson was kind enough to send me a demonstration disk of Quintillion.

Space does not permit me to list all of the people whom I interviewed about the economic, cultural, and social life of Colorado Springs today. Some people, however, were especially helpful or insightful: guidance counselors Cheryl Griesinger at Cheyenne Mountain High School, Mike Foreman and Nancy Martinez at Manitou Springs High School, Jane Trogdon at Harrison High School, and Chris Christian at Palmer High School; Elisa, Carlos, and Cynthia Zamot; the architect Morey Bean; Richard Conway of Conway’s Red Top Restaurant; Richard and Judy Noyes at the Chinook Bookshop; Rocky Scott, president of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation; Cara DeGette, news editor of the
Colorado Springs Independent;
Amy D. Haimerl, editor of the
Colorado Springs Business Journal;
Major Mike Birmingham at the U.S. Space Command; Joe Brady, co-owner of The Hide & Seek; Toast and Marcea, proprietors of the Holey Rollers Tattoo Parlor; and the lovely elderly woman who gave me a guided tour of the Focus on the Family headquarters complex, whose name I will not mention. For a sense of James Dobson’s philosophy, I
read his child-rearing guide
The New Dare to Discipline
(Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1992) and Gil Alexander-Moegerle,
James Dobson’s War on America
(Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997).

Robert Emerson’s
The New Economics of Fast Food
has useful material on the labor costs and policies of the major chains, as do John Love’s
Behind the Arches
and
Big Mac
, by Max Boas and Steve Chain. Robin Leidner and Ester Reiter are sociologists who worked at chain restaurants in order to write about the nature of such employment. Reiter’s
Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer
(Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1991) focuses on Burger King, while Leidner’s
Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) looks at McDonald’s.
Quick Service that Sells!: The Art of Profitable Hospitality for Quick-Service Restaurants
(Denver: Pencom International, 1997), written by Phil “Zoom” Roberts and Christopher O’Donnell, reveals some motivational tricks of the trade.

Working in the Service Society
, edited by Lynn Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni, suggests how the labor policies of the fast food industry are now being adopted throughout the American economy. Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, outlined for me some of his research on the fast food industry and the minimum wage. I also found the book that he wrote with David Card,
Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), to be useful. A recent study by the USDA Economic Research Service cogently refutes the argument that higher wages will harm the fast food industry. The study, written by Chinkook Lee and Brian O’Roark, is titled “The Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on Food and Kindred Products Prices: An Analysis of Price Pass-Through” (Washington, D.C.: Food and Rural Economics Division, USDA Economic Research Service, Technical Bulletin No. 1877, July 1999). A report by the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Health and Safety Implications of Child Labor —
Protecting Youth at Work: Health, Safety, and Development of Working Children and Adolescents in the United States
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998) — outlines the social consequences of a teenage workforce. Many of its conclusions were foreshadowed by a National Safe Workplace Institute report,
Sacrificing America’s Youth: The Problem of Child Labor and the Response of Government
(Chicago: National Safe Workplace Institute, 1992). Two other reports were useful: Janice Windau, Eric Sygnatur, and Guy Toscano, “Profile of Work Injuries Incurred by Young Workers,”
Monthly Labor Review
, June 1, 1999; and
Report on the Youth Labor Force
(Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Labor, June 2000). For the section on fast food crime, I interviewed law enforcement officers in Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, and Omaha — as well as Joseph A. Kinney, president of the National Safe Workplace Institute, and Jerald Greenberg, an expert on workplace theft and a professor of ethics and business management at the University of Ohio.

Page

61
About a third of the city’s inhabitants:
Cited in “Colorado Springs Facts,” Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce.

the population of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area:
See “Colorado Springs Fact Sheet,” Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation,
June 1998; and “Metropolitan Area Population Estimates for July 1, 1998, and Population Change for April 1990 to July 1998,” U.S. Census Bureau, September 30, 1999.

61
Denver’s population is about four times larger:
See “Metropolitan Area Population Estimates,” and Terry Cotten, “Springs Council Adopts Budget,”
Denver Post
, November 29, 1999.

about one-fifth of the city’s housing sat vacant:
Cited in Markusen et al.,
Rise of the Gunbelt
, p. 178.

a direct capital investment of $30 million:
Ibid., p. 178.

62
nearly half the jobs in Colorado Springs:
Interview with Rocky Scott, president of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation.

“In Your Face from Outer Space”:
The unit is the U.S. Air Force Space Warfare Center.

the rate of union membership:
Cited in “Colorado Springs: The Pikes Peak Region,” Greater Colorado Springs Development Agency, 1997.

Hoiles was politically conservative:
See James S. Granelli, “The Fight for Freedom Newspapers,”
Los Angeles Times
, November 17, 1985.

advocates spanking disobedient children:
See Dobson,
The New Dare to Discipline
, pp. 1–7, 50, 64.

generates much larger annual revenues:
See Alexander-Moegerle,
Dobson’s War on America
, p. 13.

64
more staunchly Republican than the American South:
See Valerie Richardson, “Population Flow Upends West’s Politics,”
Washington Times
, February 28, 1999.

approximately one million people:
Cited in William H. Frey, “Immigrant and Native Migrant Magnets,”
American Demographics
, November 1996. See also William G. Deming, “A decade of economic change and population shifts in U.S. regions,”
Monthly Labor Review
, November 1996.

“the new white flight”:
William H. Frey, “The New White Flight,”
American Demographics
, April 1994.

about 100,000 people:
Cited in Donald Blount, “Colorado’s Pace of Growth Likely to Taper Off in 1999,”
Denver Post
, February 7, 1999.

ranked forty-ninth in the nation:
The ranking, by
Education Week
magazine in 1998, took into account the state’s per capita spending on schools, cost of living, and personal income. Cited in Janet Bingham, “Schools Get Lower Marks,”
Denver Post
, January 8, 1999.

three times the number of cars:
Cited in Terri Cotten, “Colorado Springs: City Grapples with Gridlock,”
Denver Post
, May 23,1999.

annual surplus of about $700 million:
Cited in Burt Hubbard, “Tax Cut Feeding Frenzy,”
Rocky Mountain News
, April 18, 1999.

one-third of the surface area:
See White,
It’s Your Misfortune
, p. 550.

65
the largest private employer in the state today:
Cited in “1998 Menu of Facts,” Colorado Restaurant Association.

restaurant industry has grown much faster than the population:
To determine the rate of growth, I counted the number of restaurants listed in the Colorado Springs Yellow Pages in 1967 and 1997.

66
more than 70 percent of fast food visits:
Cited in J. P. Donlon, “Quinlan Fries
Harder: Interview with McDonald’s CEO Michael Quinlan,”
Chief Executive
, January 11, 1998. See also Judith Waldrop, “Most Restaurant Meals Are Bought on Impulse,”
American Demographics
, February 1994.

66
Ray Kroc flew in a Cessna… McDonald’s later used helicopters:
See Kroc,
Grinding It Out
, p. 176.

one of the world’s leading purchasers of commercial satellite:
Interview with Elliott Olson.

“spy on their customers”:
William Dunn, “Skycams Drain Floods, Save Lives, Sell Burgers,”
American Demographics
, July 1992.

68
two-thirds of the nation’s fast food workers:
Cited in Robert W. Van Giezen, “Occupational Wages in the Fast Food Industry,”
Monthly Labor Review
, August 1994; and Alan Liddle, “Diversity at Work: Teenagers,”
Nation’s Restaurant News
, May 24, 1999.

Business historian Alfred D. Chandler has argued:
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.,
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 241–42.

69
The guacamole isn’t made by workers:
See Joel Millman, “These Days, Mexico Serves as a Giant Offshore Kitchen,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 19, 2000.

70
“Smile with a greeting”:
Quoted in Reiter,
Making Fast Food
, p. 85.

“When management determines exactly”:
Leidner,
Fast Food, Fast Talk
, p. 3.

English is now the second language:
Cited in Rita Rousseau, “Employing the New America,”
Restaurants and Institutions
, March 15, 1997.

71
a 1999 conference on foodservice equipment:
The conference was COEX ’99, the Twenty-sixth Annual Chain Operators Exchange. The panel was Breakout Session C: “Too Many Cooks… Cutting Labor Cost in the Kitchen.” The participants were Larry Behm, vice president, restaurant systems engineering, Taco Bell Corporation; Dave Brewer, vice president, engineering KFC-Tricon; Jane Gannaway, vice president, restaurant planning, design and procurement, Hardee’s; Jerry Sus, home office director, equipment systems engineering, McDonald’s Corporation; and John Reckert, director of strategic operations and research & development, Burger King Corporation. The session was recorded by Convention Tapes International, Miami, Florida.