• #200: Happy Meal – 35 Billion Served

  • Apr 9 2025
  • Duración: 20 m
  • Podcast

#200: Happy Meal – 35 Billion Served

  • Resumen

  • Because of the Happy Meal McDonalds is the world's largest toy distributor. Larger than Hasbro or Mattel. This is an Empire! Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is... Well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Out Of This World Plumbing Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple, and I was ranting and raving about a new book I'm fascinated with and crazed about. And Stephen hit the record button and decided we were going to talk about Happy Meals instead of that. So here we are. Happy Meals, huh? Stephen Semple: Happy Meals, yeah. Dave Young: The McDonald Happy Meal. The precursor to the Playland. I've always enjoyed going through the McDonald's drive-through and ordering a happy meal, whether I had a kid in the car or not. Stephen Semple: I could see you doing that. Dave Young: And then sometimes they look and go, "Well, where's the kid?" I'm like, "Hey, mind your own business about the kid." Stephen Semple: They're in the trunk. Dave Young: There's a kid somewhere. Give me my damn toy. Stephen Semple: I was going to ask, what's your favorite part? Is it the toy? Dave Young: Absolutely. You can get a nugget, a few of them. Stephen Semple: Well, here's the crazy thing is it is the most sold meal in history. There's been like 35 billion happy meals sold. Dave Young: Is it, really? That's a lot of happy. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: And it actually makes McDonald's one of the largest toy distributors in the world. They've given away billions of toys. Dave Young: Oh, sure they did. Stephen Semple: More toys than Hasbro or Mattel. Dave Young: And just controversy like when they were giving away Beanie Baby toys. Good Lord, people were losing their minds. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Yeah. Dave Young: I'm trying to think of who this is. It might be our mutual friend, Gordon. Somebody in our circle tells a story about their dad driving the family through McDonald's when they were kids and everybody getting really excited because like, "I'm going to get a Happy Meal." And their dad orders one cup of coffee and just keeps going. I'm like, "Oh, man, that would suck." Stephen Semple: That would be a very unhappy car. Dave Young: So when did the Happy Meal start? Stephen Semple: There's a bit of a debate about who actually created the Happy Meal. So we're going to explore a couple of the different stories, but it was basically 1974. Dave Young: Okay. Yeah. Stephen Semple: One of the stories is it was created in Guatemala by Dona Yoly and her husband who opened the first franchise in that country. Dave Young: Wow. Stephen Semple: And Dona wanted her restaurant to feel like a family restaurant. Look, she understood things had to be done the McDonald's way- Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: ... to the corporate standards because McDonald's even has a Hamburger University- Dave Young: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Stephen Semple: ... which was a brainchild of Fred Turner, and it's a training program for franchisees. We could even do a thing on Hamburger University because it was the first of its type. It was the first training program of its type for franchisees. So there's always this thing that McDonald's is trying to set where there's this goal of a consistent experience, but they also want to give franchisees some freedom because what they have found is that franchisees oft...
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