Professor Elam

Weekend July 4,  2015

My latest gearhead guilty pleasures are Jay Leno's Garage, new episodes posted late Sunday evening on youtube.  and Wheeler Dealers, many older episodes are on you tube. Recently Jay Leno featured a lady who is CEO of In and Out Burgers, the daughter of the founder I believe. She is driving one of his hot rods no on the drag race circuit. He commented that since its founding in 1948, he thought the chain had done well in that it never wandered away from its original concept. Now Jay is a smart guy and that got my curiosity going. 

I have a photo of the actual menu in the store but for some reason it is not loading in typed. But the point is that you can have a double burger, a cheeseburger, or a hamburger or order 1 or 2 or 3 and get that burger plus fries and a drink. And that is it, period. Burgers come with may, lettuce and tomato, you can add or delete the onion. 

As we study managerial accounting, you will learn the importance of building multiple products off a single base product, like burgers. I looked and there are two recent locations in San Antonio, on just outside 1604 on Culebra and that other in Windcrest, i.e., both east and west. the place as jammed at noon on July 4 I could not count all the people working behind the counter, but ours was out in just a few minutes. 

In and Out just opened their 300th location. I think the point there is that they are very careful in how many they open, Whataburger has about 750 locations. 

Meanwhile last year in North America MCD has 14,379 locations. When MCD was just getting going in the 1960s it was said that they never had a failed restaurant. That can no longer be said. IN fact one article reports the new CEO i s shuttering 350 restaurants. And big does not necessarily mean better, Recall how General Motors fell from a 60% market share in the US to about 14%. Net profit for the last quarter just dropped by a one third, Ouch. 

One of the big gripes is a clutterred menu.  Another study noted that MCD got away from the dollar menu and never replaced it with anything. Back in the 1960s MCD advertised a good meal and change back from your dollar. Sure inflation is up but…

JCP nearly went bust under Ron Johnson. Johnson tried to change all th JC Penny's at one, big mistake. JCP dumped him barely  in time to save the chain. 

Keep it simple, if it ain't brooke don't fix it. As MCD struggles with Kale on the menu, In and Out has customers near lined up out the door with iceberg lettuce and tomato. How complicated is that?