In addition to physical expansion and adaptation, McDonald’s has developed many partnerships over the years. McDonald’s partners with various companies to put themed toys in its Happy Meals, to help promote its business to children. Some of its partnerships are also with community-based and cultural organizations including the Asian American Justice Center, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and The Wounded Warrior Project, to reach more consumers. In the 1990s, McDonald’s partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund, to reduce its solid waste production, which was “the first partnership between an environmental group and a Fortune 500 company in an era when environmental and business interests were typically not aligned”
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The company itself first went public in 1965 to finance its own ventures, but has ended up financing the ventures of many other companies before simply giving them up. According to Business Insider, McDonald’s owned ninety percent of Chipotle’s stock but instead of keeping the company, it decided to sell all of it in 2005. The article explains that, “Now Chipotle has more than 1800 locations and business is booming, while McDonald’s is battling declining sales and traffic” (Peterson, 2015). Some of Chipotles’ success is due in part to the fact that McDonald’s owned it. The firm did the same for Donato’s Pizza (which it acquired in 1999 but sold back to the owner in 2003) and Boston Market (acquired in 2000, but sold to Sun Capital in 2007). McDonald’s also sold Redbox, a DVD rental kiosk company which it created, to Outerwall in 2009, and its Restaurant Technology Services were sold to Xerox in 2012 ("Timeline," 2016). Selling these companies was mainly to allow McDonald’s to focus on its own goods and customers, rather than to make money off of selling companies. In fact, some of these companies, ended up expanding a lot more after McDonald’s sold them, due to the extra attention they could receive from the smaller company which bought them up. Still, McDonald’s could have definitely seen some benefits from continuing to own some of these
The company itself first went public in 1965 to finance its own ventures, but has ended up financing the ventures of many other companies before simply giving them up. According to Business Insider, McDonald’s owned ninety percent of Chipotle’s stock but instead of keeping the company, it decided to sell all of it in 2005. The article explains that, “Now Chipotle has more than 1800 locations and business is booming, while McDonald’s is battling declining sales and traffic” (Peterson, 2015). Some of Chipotles’ success is due in part to the fact that McDonald’s owned it. The firm did the same for Donato’s Pizza (which it acquired in 1999 but sold back to the owner in 2003) and Boston Market (acquired in 2000, but sold to Sun Capital in 2007). McDonald’s also sold Redbox, a DVD rental kiosk company which it created, to Outerwall in 2009, and its Restaurant Technology Services were sold to Xerox in 2012 ("Timeline," 2016). Selling these companies was mainly to allow McDonald’s to focus on its own goods and customers, rather than to make money off of selling companies. In fact, some of these companies, ended up expanding a lot more after McDonald’s sold them, due to the extra attention they could receive from the smaller company which bought them up. Still, McDonald’s could have definitely seen some benefits from continuing to own some of these