Here are five significant quotes and their explanations from Chapter Two of Fast Food Nation. The first is "The Disneyesque tone of the museum reflects, among other things, many of the similarities between the McDonald’s Corporation and the Walt Disney Company" (page 33). This quote refers to the author's tour of the Ray A. Kroc Museum. Kroc was the founder of McDonald's, and like Walt Disney, he became an expert at selling food and experiences to children.
The second quote is "He looked at the restaurant 'through the eyes of a salesman' and envisioned putting a McDonald’s at busy intersections all across the land" (page 36). This quote is also about Ray Kroc's ability to sell the McDonald's experience to make it a successful American chain. Kroc is quoted as saying, "This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest” (page 38). This encapsulates his idea about his customers and about the fast food business, as he would do anything to make McDonald's succeed.
Kroc's success also came from targeting kids in the midst of the national Baby Boom after World War II. As the author writes, "The McDonald brothers had aimed for a family crowd, and now Kroc improved and refined their marketing strategy. He’d picked the right moment. America was in the middle of a baby boom; the number of children had soared in the decade after World War II." In addition to targeting kids, he also made how McDonald's sold food as important as what it sold. As Schlosser writes about Kroc, "He liked to tell people that he was really in show business, not the restaurant business." This quote emphasizes the idea that McDonald's was a masterpiece of marketing.
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