HW 7

Fast food nation, by Eric Schlosser, chapter 1:

Fast food restaurants were started by common people trying to find new was to make money in the food business. All the biggest fast food chains were started by common people who ended up becoming rich and being able to expand or have their company bought out. Carl Karcher was a good example of an ordinary man who had a fast food chain that got famous and he was able to open up his own company.

Most of the people who started fast food chains seemed to be honest businessmen but the only way to run a fast food chain is to exploit people so in the end they were greedy although the book didn't give that tone. I think the book did a very good job of showing the process of how Anaheim went from being farmland to buildings and how the fast food culture blew up and increased the rate at which farm land was disappearing. In general I thought the book has been started off pretty slow although the first chapter showed interesting changes specifically in California.

Fast Food Nation, Chapter 2:

The founder of disney and the founder of Mcdonalds are very similar man and had a very similar path to wealth although Walt Disney's happened a bit quicker. The owners of McDonalds have realized that kids are a very efficient group to advertise to and have went to great lengths to advertise to kids and other fast food chains and big food companies have done the same. Dan Derose for example helped many schools get funding from big soda companies look to advertise to children.

This chapter got much more interesting. The amount companies are willing to spend to advertise shows how truly effective and important it is. The companies went from giving schools about 27 cents to about 27 dollars per student in schools they advertise in. Advertising to the kids that big companies do has greatly influenced our society. Much of television consists of that and almost 90 percent of children go to Macdonalds in a month. This shows the effectiveness of their advertising.

Fast Food Nation, Chapter 3:

Fast food chains target teens and the poor or unemployed as workers due to the fact that they can pay them low wages, not give them benefits, and control them with relative ease. Fast food chains are strongly opposed to unions and in the past have gone to great lengths to stop any efforts of unionizing amongst workers. Fast food chains treat their workers with very little respect and not surprisingly the majority of robberies of fast food chains are committed by former or current employees.

"and senator Kennedy's pushing hard on a $7.25 minimum wage," he continued. "that'll be fun won't it? I love the idea of that, I sure do - strike me dead!"
"I see the possibility of union" the thought "chilled" him.

These quotes are both from Norman Brinker the owners of the Chili's restaurant chain at the Annual Multi-Unit Foodserver Operator Conference. To me these quotes say it all; a group of millionaires gather together and complain about workers making $7.25 and hour and trying to unionize. The disgusting nature of the conference in itself say enough about these fast food corporations, although they are all in competition they all meet to figure out new and more effiecient ways to exploit their workers and in turn increase their profits.