McDonalds Hires 1st Black CEO

McDonald’s has marked a milestone by hiring the company’s first African American CEO, as 22-year McDonald’s veteran Don Thompson will replace current CEO Jim Skinner, who’s retiring.
Thompson currently works as the company’s global strategy and operations for the more than 33,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 119 countries.
It’s not going to be an easy start for Thompson, as economic turmoil continues to rise in Europe, McDonald’s largest market by revenue. The company has also been struggling with rising costs of labor and ingredients, something Thompson will be responsible for remedying.

Throwback McDonald’s Commercial (1992):

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD) is the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the “Speedee Service System” in 1948 furthered the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant that the White Castle hamburger chain had already put into practice more than two decades earlier. The original mascot of McDonald’s was a man with a chef’s hat on top of a hamburger shaped head whose name was “Speedee.” Speedee was eventually replaced with Ronald McDonald by 1967 when the company first filed a U.S. trademark on a clown shaped man having puffed out costume legs.
McDonald’s first filed for a U.S. trademark on the name “McDonald’s” on May 4, 1961, with the description “Drive-In Restaurant Services,” which continues to be renewed through the end of December 2009. In the same year, on September 13, 1961, the company filed a logo trademark on an overlapping, double arched “M” symbol. The overlapping double arched “M” symbol logo was temporarily disfavored by September 6, 1962, when a trademark was filed for a single arch, shaped over many of the early McDonald’s restaurants in the early years. Although the “Golden Arches” appeared in various forms, the present form as a letter “M” did not appear until November 18, 1968, when the company applied for a U.S. trademark.

McDonald’s corporate logo used from 1968 to 2006. It still exists at some restaurants.
The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald’s restaurant overall. Kroc later purchased the McDonald brothers’ equity in the company and led its worldwide expansion, and the company became listed on the public stock markets in 1965. Kroc was also noted for aggressive business practices, compelling the McDonald brothers to leave the fast food industry. The McDonald brothers and Kroc feuded over control of the business, as documented in both Kroc’s autobiography and in the McDonald brothers’ autobiography. The site of the McDonald brothers’ original restaurant is now a monument. With the expansion of McDonald’s into many international markets, the company has become a symbol of globalization and the spread of the American way of life. Its prominence has also made it a frequent topic of public debates about obesity, corporate ethics and consumer responsibility.

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