{"id":30004,"date":"2015-02-02T04:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T09:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30004"},"modified":"2024-07-15T18:25:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T22:25:21","slug":"the-burger-wars-of-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/02\/02\/the-burger-wars-of-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The Burger Wars of the 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

The old burger wars were between McDonald’s and its similar-but-slightly-different competitors like Burger King and Wendy’s. Peter Suderman<\/a> says the new burger wars won’t follow the same pattern. The new battle will be more like plucky bands of humans hunting down woolly mammoths, as the smaller-but-nimbler chains start to encroach on the big chains’ traditional territories:<\/p>\n

Hamburger fans, rejoice: Better burgers are winning the fast-food wars.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, McDonald\u2019s \u2014 the biggest and most successful brand in fast food \u2014 announced that its current CEO, Don Thompson, would be stepping down. The departure comes on the heels of a lackluster earnings report and a steep drop in overall sales as competition from new entrants has increased.<\/p>\n

This morning, shares of Shake Shack, a rapidly growing burger chain that grew out of a hot dog stand in Manhattan, shot up in price during the company\u2019s first day of public trading. The restaurant chain has just 63 locations, but it\u2019s now worth an estimated $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n

The problems facing McDonald\u2019s are obvious: Because it is so well known and so dominant, it has a hard time changing in response to market demand. Its success gives it access to tremendous resources, but its all-things-to-everyone approach, and the inevitable bloat that tends to accrue at any successful legacy business, leaves it vulnerable to new players that can do fewer things better \u2014 like, for example, Shake Shack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to imagine the fast food market without McDonald’s, but it was a very different world then. Here’s Mark Knopfler’s tribute-of-sorts to Ray Kroc, who turned the McDonald’s brand into one of the world’s most well-known and profitable companies:<\/p>\n