Cars are an essential part of our everyday lives. We drive them to school, to work, to restaurants, to anywhere we want to go. But cars haven’t always been such an essential part of our lives. It wasn’t until after World War II that America transformed into a motorist society. Although there were many factors that prompted this change, franchises like McDonald’s, Holiday Inn, and General Motors all played a role in the creation of a motorist society.
Soon after brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California in 1940, they realized that their business could be more profitable if they streamlined every aspect of it. In order to accomplish this task, they cut down their menu to just hamburgers, replaced waiters with a self-service order counter, and substituted paper wrappers and cups for plates and glasses. In 1954, a man named Ray Kroc persuaded the McDonald brothers to hire him as a franchising agent. Kroc’s franchise restaurants were highly successful, as the casual nature of the food chain was the perfect place for families with young children. The rise of McDonald's perfectly paired with the rise of automobiles. Both complemented each other — McDonald’s needed people to drive to their locations, and automobile manufacturers needed desirable locations for people to drive to.
A similar relationship occurred between automobiles and motel chains. When Kemmon Wilson took his family on a road trip to Washington, D.C. in 1951, he struggled with finding a good place for his family to sleep overnight in. This trip inspired Wilson to start the Holiday Inn chain. Hotel chains like the Holiday Inn complemented America’s highway systems, as tired drivers could easily merge off the highway and spend the night at a quality, inexpensive motel before heading back out on the highway again.
Another company that contributed to the motorist society was General Motors. This is perhaps the most obvious company to aid in America’s dependence on automobiles, since General Motors was the biggest and best-known manufacturing company. In 1955, General Motors became the first U.S. corporation to earn over $1 billion a year. They managed to turn such a profit by changing the style of and introducing new features to their automobiles each year, making consumers feel the need to continuously buy new vehicles.
Today we not only see McDonald's, Holiday Inn, and General Motors everywhere, we also see the effect they have on society. What other franchises have impacted our everyday lives? Where can we see this impact today?
It's interesting to think of a time before fast-food and stream-lined service in nearly every aspect of life. To see how much America was changed by these inventions is truly amazing. It's incredible to me that a single restaurant from the 50s has continued on today to become a national symbol of the United States in many ways.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting information, I thought the history of how these fast food restaurants had shaped America really shows how much America has changed over the years. I think aside from famous businesses such as Starbucks, KFC or McDonalds, we often see iconic franchise in other parts of America's industry such as Vogue magazine which began in the late 1800s or the Wall Street Journal located in New York. From these profound business creations, people's lives were changed to become more complex as fast food, hotels and news began existing. These creations symbolize iconic time periods within America and left a important mindset of entrepreneurship within the people's mind.
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