All language subtitles for The Food That Built America - A Game Of Chicken

- 17,000
Chicken McNuggets

are eaten every second.

Five million buckets of
Kentucky Fried Chicken

are sold every month.

And $10 billion of
Chick-fil-A sandwiches

are sold per year.

Chicken accounts for almost 20%

of the $640 billion
global fast-food industry.

But 50 years ago,

chicken sandwiches
aren't even on the menu.

- I think we think
of the fast-food menu

as having five different
varieties of chicken sandwich,

except back in the day,
it was a simple burger,

but not much else.

- Until new
government guidelines

upend the fast-food industry-

- We gotta find a way
to stop the bleeding.

- And a
stunning betrayal-

- We are going to remake Burger
King in McDonald's image.

- There is a true
corporate warfare going on.

- Sparks a new era
of rivalry and innovation-

- If we can get the kids,
the parents will come.

- Gotta be, uh, dippable.

- And launches
some of the most iconic

fast-food products ever created.

- Let's go with all four.

- Can you do this with chicken?

- It's 1972.

The United States is in the
throes of the Vietnam War,

and the economic boom of the
past two decades is fading.

- The 1970s were a bad time,

bad time economically
for the United States.

You had this phenomenon
called "stagflation".

You'd have high unemployment

and high inflation
at the same time.

- Americans are
looking for filling meals

at a good value, and they
increasingly turn to fast food.

By the early-1970s,

it accounts for
nearly one-quarter

of the $6 billion the
country spends on food.

- The wages are going
down and you do see

not a kind of celebration
of convenience,

but convenience is
a real necessity.

- Some type of fast food outlet

was recognizable by
American consumers.

Whether they lived in suburbs

or they lived in the inner city,

people had a sense of what
fast food products were.

They knew what a burger was.

They knew that they should be
able to get it cheap and fast.

- Almost
since its inception,

one chain has dominated the
McDonald's.

And after 15 years,

Ray Kroc still rules
the McDonald's empire

as chairman of the board,

with company President Fred
Turner as his right-hand man.

- Ray Kroc was a hustler.

He was a hard worker.

He was incredibly shrewd.

Very strident, very
opinionated boss.

- It has to be a set
leader with a set goal,

which I call, he's
the tip of the spear.

If the spear doesn't have a tip,

it can't drive
through the target.

- Now,
competition is on the rise.

Just 20 years before,

there were less than a few
thousand fast food restaurants.

But by the mid-1970s,
there are nearly 60,000,

representing over
300 rival chains.

- The fast food
industry is bigger

than anyone had ever
expected by the 1970s

and there's a true
corporate warfare going on.

They are pushing very
hard against each other.

- Five
years after releasing

his signature Big Mac,

Kroc is desperate to
beat back the competition

with something new.

And having discovered the
Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish,

and more at
individual franchises,

Kroc hits the road again,
looking to strike gold.

- It starts with a toasted
buttered English muffin.

- In California,
franchise owner Herb Peterson

pitches Kroc an item
unlike anything else

on McDonald's menu.

- Next, a slice of
grilled Canadian bacon,

followed by a fried egg
with the yolk broken,

formed in a Teflon circle, and
a slice of American cheese.

It's my take on eggs Benedict.

- At this time, breakfast
at a fast food place

was unheard of.

If you had breakfast
in the morning,

you made breakfast in
the morning at home.

- Thoughts?

- It's interesting.

- Don?

- Sorry.

Just don't see it.

- Donald Smith, who was
about third in line, CEO,

very successful employee-

- By all accounts, a
brilliant young executive.

- Our whole model
is based on the fact

that we don't serve anything

that requires plates,
forks, or knives.

- Now it's a sandwich;
problem solved.

- Life at McDonald's could
be a pretty strict hierarchy.

When Ray Kroc was in charge,
it was his way or the highway.

- I love it.

Congratulations.
- Thank you, thank you.

- Give us a moment?

- Yeah, sure.
- Great.

Why are my franchise operators

giving me better ideas
than both of you combined?

- I'm not a chef.

It's not my job.

- Then remind me what it
is I'm paying you for.

- In 1976,

McDonald's launches the
Egg McMuffin nationwide.

- Breakfast is a huge risk.

It requires new supplies,
so many new suppliers,

so many more employee
hours, new menus.

But for Ray Kroc, breakfast
represents this chance

to expand McDonald's grip over
the American culinary scene.

- The gamble
immediately pays off,

and breakfast soon makes up
20% of McDonald's annual sales.

- Americans are time-strapped
and they need food quickly,

and they want
something that's cheap

and they want something
that's easy to get

and that will make
their families happy.

- The idea that you
could drive up your car

and order a McMuffin
and a cup of coffee

and just eat your breakfast
on your way to work,

that was new, and
people loved it,

and it was a huge
success for McDonald's.

- Kroc's
vision revolutionizes

the American breakfast.

And soon, one out of
every four breakfasts

eaten outside the home is
at a fast food restaurant.

By dominating all
three meals of the day,

McDonald's remains
untouchable for now.

1,200 miles away,
another fast food chain

is a distant second to
Burger King.

- Burger King was
scrambling to keep up.

There was no real true
culinary innovation

to keep pace with McDonald's,

and McDonald's was
greater, faster,

more technically advanced
than Burger King.

- The
company is owned

by the Pillsbury Corporation,

which purchased it from
original founders John McLamore

and Dave Edgerton
a decade earlier,

and sales have been
declining ever since.

- When a restaurant
chain like Burger King

gets purchased by a
larger corporate entity,

sometimes they have to
struggle for attention

in the parent company.

- Burger King was sort
of without its compass.

When a founder leaves a company,

a lot of the original spirit

that guided its creation
and its innovation

throughout the years leaves.

- After years of
watching Burger King lag behind,

Pillsbury is on the
hunt for new leadership.

And they're not just looking

for a marginal
increase in sales.

They wanna take the fight
directly to McDonald's.

- So, you guys think
this could work, huh?

- Definitely.

- Yeah?

- Don, I've got
a call for you on line four.

- Don Smith.

No, you're not on speakerphone.

Uh-huh.

Yes, I am.

Got it.

Thanks.

- Who was that?

- My wife.

- Can we do some work now?

All right.

Fred, can you show
me some numbers-

- Don Smith.

Pleasure finally
meeting you in person.

Please, have a seat.

Thank you for agreeing to
see us on such short notice.

- Forgive me for being blunt,

but are you gonna tell
me what this is about?

You were very
cryptic on the phone.

- We had to take precautions,

given the nature
of this meeting.

- And what exactly is the
nature of this meeting?

- We want you to come
work for Burger King,

as president and CEO.

- I'm flattered, but
I already have a job,

and it's been very good to me.

What's this?

- Your starting salary.

Plus perks.

- When Don Smith gets
approached by Pillsbury,

he has to weigh all of these
opposing factors, you know,

"Do I stay loyal to Ray Kroc?

"Do I stay loyal to McDonald's?

"Or do I take this opportunity

"to turn something
that, in Burger King,

"could grow into a
huge juggernaut as well

"to its full potential?"

- Let's get started.

- By the mid-1970s,
white-collar workers

are increasingly
looking for shortcuts

on their climb up
the corporate ladder,

chasing faster success
and bigger paydays.

- An American dream
for this generation

that has the disposable income

to be able to afford that house

and to afford those luxury
items which'll ultimately help

to help them claim a piece of
that dream in a tangible way.

- Workers in their
20s and 30s are changing jobs

three times more than their
previous generation did,

choosing quicker
advancement over loyalty,

like former Ray Kroc
protege Don Smith.

- Famously, Don Smith felt he
would have no upward mobility

in the corporate
structure of McDonald's.

He felt so close to the top

with no potential
for advancement,

so he was recruited to
go head Burger King.

- Upon learning of
Don Smith's defection,

it's safe to say that anyone
within a half-mile distance

of Ray Kroc probably
heard his voice.

He's affected by
the lack of loyalty.

He takes it personally,

and that's how he's
always run his businesses.

- To fight back
against Burger King's coup,

Kroc makes a new
hire of his own,

bringing in a secret weapon
not for the boardroom-

- Follow me.

- But
for the kitchen.

- Everything that you need
will be at your disposal.

Find something that's missing?

Say so and it's yours.

- Kroc, in kind of an
unprecedented move,

hires a gourmet chef
named Rene Arend

to become kind of a
culinary consultant.

- Rene Arend had cooked
meals for Hollywood stars,

Belgian royalty, French
royalty, and Queen Elizabeth.

For Ray Kroc, creating something

that is unique to McDonald's

requires thinking that
is outside of the box.

- Brought you here to innovate.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

You up for that?

- Certainly.

- The gourmet chef
like Rene Arend

in a McDonald's organization

did not follow simple
logic or common sense,

but Ray Kroc was ready
to take the big risk

to have that big reward.

- Ray Kroc now has

the foremost culinary
team in fast food.

But 1,300 miles away, Don Smith
is formulating a battle plan

to take on his former employer.

- His eyes are on the prize,
and the prize is growth.

The prize is beating McDonald's.

- To
analyze Burger King's

performance and sales data,

Smith utilizes a tool not

a company-wide computer system.

Released just 13 years earlier,
the first supercomputer

was roughly the size
of four filing cabinets

and cost the modern
equivalent of $60 million.

Nicknamed "Big Mamma," Burger
King's system is expensive

and rudimentary by
today's standards.

- It was a way of
tracking how much product

was being brought
into restaurants

and how much product
was being brought out.

And it was supposed
to reduce theft.

It was supposed to really
focus on efficiency.

- Last year, McDonald's
sales hit $3.7 billion.

Know what Burger King's were?

A quarter that.

They offer breakfast, we don't.

They offer delicious fries.

Ours are an embarrassment.

We have an outrageously
expensive computer machine

that is more concerned
with catching workers

who put too many fries in a bag

than it is about how we can
better serve the customer.

- What this system
did in many ways,

it depersonalized the
customer experience

and it didn't allow
workers to really focus

on the quality of the
product they were delivering.

- We are going to remake Burger
King in McDonald's image;

learn from their mistakes,
capitalize on their failures.

That means doing whatever it
is that we have to do to win.

- Smith begins
to overhaul Burger King

from the ground up, a plan
he dubs Operation Phoenix.

- Operation Phoenix is
a calculated attempt

to bring a lot of the business
attributes of McDonald's

into the Burger King system.

- He knew all the
McDonald's practices.

He knew what
automation they used,

whether it was the type
of shortening they used.

Heck, he even used the same kind

of digital french fry machine.

He knew what gave them
a competitive edge,

and he turned around

and gave all those
things to Burger King.

- In
the summer of 1977,

just months after
leaving McDonald's,

Don Smith switches
Burger King's fries

to the same Idaho potatoes

that have become his former
employer's signature.

And he starts development on
a competing breakfast sandwich

that will one day lead
to the Croissan'wich.

- One of the things that Don
Smith brings to Burger King

is the focus on the customer.

That focus on how customers
at that restaurant

are experiencing the food,

Don reintroduces that
to Burger King culture.

- In the immediate aftermath
of Operation Phoenix,

Burger King's sales
grow, the menu expands,

and they begin to sort
of get their mojo back.

- Over the next year,

Burger King opens over a
thousand new restaurants

in a direct assault
on McDonald's.

- For Ray Kroc, seeing one
of your former proteges

on the magazine's cover as
the leader of another company

must've driven him mad.

- And Ray Kroc may
finally have met his match.

- By 1977,
driven by burger chains

like McDonald's and Burger
King, fast food is generating

a staggering $20
billion a year in sales.

But that same year, the
United States Senate

releases the first set
of dietary guidelines

in the nation's history.

They recommend a reduction in
consumption of salt, sugar,

and saturated fat, a substance
prevalent in red meat.

- Americans have
never really had

that level of instruction
from a government body

in terms of dietary
needs and nutrition.

- Physicians begin to
observe a relationship

between the consumption of
red meat and heart attack.

A group of people
would leave the office

and they would say, "Well,
what do you want to eat?"

And one of them would say,

"Look, I don't wanna
eat red meat today.

"I hear it's bad for you."

And they would bypass McDonald's
and go someplace else.

- At the time,
the average American consumes

almost 100 pounds
of red meat a year,

a 30% increase over just
the last two decades.

And McDonald's menu is driven
by the original hamburger,

the Quarter-Pounder,
and the Big Mac.

- These are last
month's sales figures.

And this is compared to where
we were this month last year.

- We gotta find a way
to stop the bleeding.

- To diversify
McDonald's offerings,

Kroc unleashes his secret
weapon, Rene Arend.

The five-star chef has been
experimenting with a new item

that could be the perfect
alternative to beef,

and he finally has a prototype.

- It's good.

It's real good.

But it's not it.

- At the
time, Americans eat

half as much chicken per
year as they do today.

And while Kentucky Fried Chicken

is known for their 11
famous herbs and spices,

chicken is practically
nonexistent

at other fast food chains.

- People want fried
chicken, they go to KFC.

We need something original.

- Not a lotta places
were serving chicken

in the 1960s and '70s.

Kentucky Fried Chicken
has already cornered

much of the fried
chicken market.

- KFC's chicken
is offered by the bucket

with wings, thighs, and breasts,

all on the bone and
in various sizes,

a far cry from McDonald's
trademark consistency.

- Ray Kroc is obsessed
with maintaining control

and guaranteeing that
on each step of the way,

every McDonald's item
would be the same.

- Creating chicken
that would scale

and reproduce and
actually look the same

and taste the same everywhere
was a real challenge.

It's labor-intensive.

Beef is easy.

Chicken is hard.

- Ray
Kroc gives Rene Arend

find a way to create a uniform
repeatable chicken dish

that will be the same at
every location every time.

It's 1978, and new government
nutritional guidelines

have ignited a race for
red meat alternatives.

But while Don Smith's
former employer, McDonald's,

struggles to find a viable
new signature product,

Burger King's test
kitchen has created

not one new health-conscious
sandwich, but four.

- Beef was always beloved
by the American population,

but these federal dietary
guidelines would have an impact.

Don Smith, he has some new
ideas, he has some fresh ideas.

He was very innovative

and brought Burger
King new ammunition.

- Ham and cheese,

lean meat chopped steak,

the signature Big Fish sandwich,

and the now-iconic
Original Chicken Sandwich,

served on a hoagie roll
with lettuce and mayonnaise.

- Let's go with all four.

- The Burger King
Chicken Sandwich,

of which I am tremendous,
tremendous fan,

those were whole
pieces of chicken.

It had almost like a
rough pebbly consistency

on the outside of the cutlet.

It had a spicy kind of
Italian bread crumb mix on it.

It was rich, it was savory.

I'm salivating talking about it.

Makes me kinda want one today.

- Most importantly,
they come by it faster

than McDonald's is able to
come by a chicken sandwich

or a chicken item.

- In 1979,

Burger King launches
all four new sandwiches,

pouring resources into an
aggressive marketing campaign

touting their chicken sandwich

as a more healthful
beef alternative.

- In a more diet-conscious era,

people rationalized that
chicken was healthier,

despite the fact that it
was breaded and deep-fried.

- Smith's
strategy works.

With nearly double the
menu options of McDonald's,

Burger King's sales jump
30% by the end of the year,

hitting $1.2 billion,

the modern equivalent
of nearly $4 billion.

- By the late-1970s, you
start to see Burger King

kind of gain ground
on McDonald's

for the first time
in maybe a decade,

and a lot of that has
to do with Don Smith

and being able to make changes

a little bit more quickly
to consumer demands.

- 1,200 miles
away, Ray Kroc is infuriated

by his former protege's
meteoric success.

- Ray Kroc was one of the
most competitive people

American business has ever known

and must've viewed Don Smith
as the ultimate usurper.

- And he
accelerates the timeline

for his new signature
chicken dish.

- I wanna launch this
chicken initiative

by the end of next quarter.

What do you got for me?

Chicken pot pie?

Not good enough.

Not good enough.

- Chicken pie pot's
historically thought of

as peasant food with stew in it,

and Ray Kroc thinks fast food

is something that you could
eat with two hands on the road,

so it's not necessarily what
he wanted to bring to market.

- It's not right for McDonald's
signature chicken dish,

but we'll get there.

- All right, back
to work, everyone.

- For the first
time in more than a decade,

McDonald's is losing
ground to a competitor,

and Ray Kroc will stop at
nothing to keep his crown.

- By 1979, Burger King's
red meat alternatives,

led by their signature
Original Chicken Sandwich,

continue to eat into
McDonald's market share.

- Ray Kroc has to reckon
with the fact that Americans,

for the first time, are
seeing red meat as the enemy,

and he has to adapt.

- Kroc uses
his secret weapon,

acclaimed chef Rene
Arend, to fight back,

launching new offerings
to diversify the menu.

- Rene Arend is really
trying to push the envelope

to find a non-beef item
to add to McDonald's menu.

The McGobbler, turkey sandwich,

and then there is a Cheddar
Melt, but they were flops.

- With their
red meat alternatives

coming up short, Fred Turner
is looking for new ways

to lure customers
back to McDonald's

and buy Rene Arend more time.

- I just spoke with the
guys in advertising.

- I don't wanna hear it.

- I think you might.

- What the hell is that?

- If we can get the
kids, parents will come.

We offer a kids meal.

A burger, fries, and a cookie,

served in a fun little box
the kids can take home.

- Today,
kids menus are standard

in sit-down restaurants

and offered by nearly every
fast food chain in the country.

But at the time,
it's revolutionary.

- Kids were always a huge part
of the McDonald's experience

because the food was affordable.

But for a kid to be
able to go to a counter

and order a hamburger,
that was unique.

- What's this?

- What do kids want more than
anything else in the world?

- Toy.

- In June of 1979,

the iconic Happy
Meal makes its debut,

and it's a wild success.

- Market towards the child,

don't just market
towards the parent,

and kids will be demanding Happy
Meals when they're in cars.

I know; My children used to
ask for Happy Meals.

I'd hear it in the backseat.

"Happy Meals?"

I don't even know how
they learned about them,

but they did.

- It was a stroke
of marketing genius.

Very often, the toys
would be so sought after,

adults would even go to
get their Happy Meal,

just to get these toys.

And great way to keep
bringing families in,

despite the dietary
craze at the time.

- Today,
Happy Meals account

for a whopping $10 million
per day in McDonald's sales,

making the fast food giant

the largest distributor
of toys in the world.

- Fast food owes its
success to children.

And as a result,

children's palates were
transformed by fast food.

- The Happy Meal
gives McDonald's a boost,

but they still don't have

a signature non-beef
dish that can compete

with Burger King's
Original Chicken Sandwich,

and Rene Arend has been working

around the clock to create one.

- This was a fine dining chef

and you're throwing him into
the realm of the french fry.

And he has to take his French
classic culinary training

and find a way to make
American fast food,

and that was a major challenge.

- What's this?

Crispy.

Bite-size.

Brilliant.

What's in that?

Onion?

- Yes.

- Chef Arend had
created something

called the onion nugget,

and they just couldn't figure
out how to get it working

and they really
couldn't figure out

a place for it on the menu.

- Can you do this with chicken?

- They realized that they
could use this template

and create a de-boned
chicken nugget.

Never before would you have

a piece of fried chicken
without a bone in it

that you could
consume in two bites,

so it was revolutionary.

- Fred
Turner has a bold vision

to create bite-size pieces
of boneless chicken.

But at the time, chicken is
served in filets or on the bone,

and the infrastructure to
mass-produce any other form

simply doesn't exist.

- One of the reasons
why there's a delay

on serving boneless chicken
in fast food restaurants

is that de-boning
chicken takes a while.

They don't have the
technology to do it quickly.

- There's no part of the
chicken called the nugget.

There's no-

It's not the wing, the leg,
and the nugget.

- To bring
the new product to market

as fast as possible,

Fred Turner calls on the
head of a frozen-food company

that makes everything from
meat pies to fried chicken.

- They're already losing the
chicken battle to Burger King,

and so what they have to do

is come up with the
McNugget that will scale

and can be served to the
masses in rapid fire time.

- You call this
a chicken nugget?

If I wanted a chicken sausage,

I woulda sliced one up myself.

- Can you give us a minute?

- Where'd you find this guy?

- Wasn't quite working with
regular ground chicken,

so they had to take the next
step, constantly researching,

constantly trying to figure out
a way that it holds together

and then, can be served quickly.

- Turner realizes
that if he's going to create

an entirely new product,

he'll have to build
it from the ground up.

- Pretty exciting, right?

It's way more complicated
than the Filet-O-Fish.

- So he
enlists Bud Sweeney,

the man who successfully oversaw

development of the Filet-O-Fish,

to design a new system and
head up a McNugget SWAT team.

- So, that bit there,

is that the part that
de-bones the chicken

or the one that cuts its
into identical pieces?

Even after we've
figured out the process,

we still need to
modify the recipe

so that it can
handle flash-freezing

and be refried at
individual restaurants

without losing the original
flavor and texture.

Sorry.

I'll let you concentrate.

- McDonald's forges
the McNugget SWAT team,

which is a collection
of culinary specialists

within the company
that work to create

the Chicken McNugget
in very quick time.

- McDonald's
is working on

a groundbreaking new weapon
in their war with Burger King.

And when it's ready,

it'll be the most dominant fast
food product ever unleashed.

It's 1979, and McDonald's elite
Chicken McNugget SWAT team

is working to produce bite-sized
pieces of boneless chicken.

And in just five months,

they create an assembly line

to efficiently de-bone
chicken by hand

and re-engineer a
hamburger patty machine

to process the chicken parts.

- They de-bone the chickens,

but then they grind them
into a chicken paste,

and then they make that chicken
paste into various shapes,

and then they fry those shapes.

- The chicken's

a bell, a ball, a
boot, and a bow tie,

all still in use today.

- And he coats it with
a very appealing crust

that gives chicken a
whole new mouthfeel.

It gives it a kind of
explosion of flavor

that ordinary
chicken doesn't have.

- To create a McNugget
is an obsession

for the team at McDonald's,
and it's this obsession

that permeates the
culture of McDonald's

from Ray Kroc on down, and
that's how the SWAT team

delivers the McNugget
to the world.

- Before
McDonald's launches

their revolutionary
new chicken nugget,

Rene Arend sees an opportunity
to maximize its potential-

- Mm-mm, out.

- By creating
a sauce to dip it in.

- In the fast food
marketplace at the time,

dipping sauces were
not something you had

and there were really not
many things you could dip.

You could dip onion
rings or french fries.

Maybe up in Buffalo, New York,

people putting blue
cheese on wings,

but it wasn't
really that common.

- More salt for this.

- One thing that Rene
Arend brings to McDonald's

is that European sensibility,

which involves a lot
of sauces in cooking

that are his specialty,

which isn't necessarily a part
of the American experience.

- After
weeks of work-

- Mm.

Yeah, that's good.

- Arend
narrows hundreds

of potential sauces
down to four,

hoping one of them
is good enough

for Ray Kroc to send to market.

- We have mustard sauce.

Sweet and sour.

Honey sauce.

And last but not least,
barbecue.

- So...

Which ones do you like?

- All of 'em.

I want 'em all.

But we can't serve
them like this.

Gotta be dippable, like
fries and ketchup on the go.

- It comes down to the function
of how you eat that chicken.

You can't eat that
chicken with a fork.

You have to eat it
with your hands.

- We could make
disposable dipping cups

prefilled with sauces.

- Perfect.

Love it.

- In 1980,

after years of grueling
experimentation,

McDonald's finally launches
the Chicken McNugget.

- There are few
ways to overstate

how wildly successful
the McNuggets were.

Local newscasts were filming

outside of McDonald's
across the country,

showing lines of people
waiting to try the McNugget,

being upset when they
ran out of stock.

- It was small, portable,
crunchy fried chicken.

You had it on the
go and it was fun.

The word McNugget is fun to say.

It was really unlike

anything you were
getting anywhere else.

- Within months,

the McNugget makes
up 20% of sales,

making it the most successful

McDonald's menu
item ever launched,

ushering in a completely
new way to consume chicken.

- I think the most
brilliant thing

about the chicken nugget
is the dipping sauce,

because what that does

is allows you to
change it all the time.

- Think about the chicken nugget

and the container in which you
dip it and how that container

is perfectly sized to
the chicken nugget.

I mean, that's science.

That's somebody using
their brain for good.

- That's now a part
of every kids menu

in every restaurant
across the world,

and that all stems from the
creation of the McNugget,

which is not a technical
part of a chicken,

but was a core idea that
McDonald's developed

into becoming something

that we make synonymous
with chicken now.

Yet again, McDonald's
and Ray Kroc

are at the forefront of a
huge shift in American diets.

- Ray
Kroc is, once again,

the undisputed
king of fast food.

And 1,200 miles away, all
Don Smith can do is watch.

- Burger King often struggled to
keep up with McDonald's

and was always at the
heels of McDonald's,

trying to compete where
McDonald's was excelling.

- Under his
brilliant leadership,

Burger King has firmly
established themselves

as the second-largest
fast food chain,

but simply can't catch
up with McDonald's.

- What Don Smith was able to do

was to bring some of
Ray Kroc's ingenuity

and the spirit of McDonald's

into Burger King when
it needed it the most.

You can't have Burger
King without Don Smith.

- This rebirth of
this great brand,

the only brand that
could really compete

with McDonald's supremacy,
and he really did it

by kind of beating
McDonald's at their own game.

- In 1980, Don
Smith is poached by PepsiCo,

where he's tasked to oversee

two of their newest

Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

The bold innovation of
the Chicken McNugget

soon inspires
mega-hit menu items

like the McRib and the
McChicken Sandwich,

cementing McDonald's
place as industry leaders.

Today, McDonald's has
over 37,000 restaurants

in 120 countries,

an influence so massive

it affects the prices of
commodities worldwide.

- In order for
McDonald's to stock up

all of its restaurants,

it has to make massive
orders in beef,

in chicken, in fish,
and in potatoes.

McDonald's growth
has transformed

the agricultural
landscape in this country.

- Burger King is
an icon in its own right,

with 18,000 locations
spread across the globe,

and they generate $10 billion

in annual sales in the
United States alone.

- Having that kinda
competition from Burger King

is what forces
McDonald's to innovate

and forces them to
create new things

that without the competition
of someone like Burger King,

McDonald's might not have

the menu variety
that it does today.