Hey, everyone, this incident and we are finally back with a brand new episode of Let's Do Shots today, we are going to speak about Starbucks and McDonald's unarguably among two of the biggest restaurant brands in the global restaurant industry. While one sells burgers and the other sells coffee, they have a strikingly similar origin story. And that's down to two men, Ray Kroc from McDonald's and Howard Schultz from Starbucks, two men who are known in the entire world as the people responsible for bringing these two brands into our lives.

What's the common factor, the fact that neither he nor Howard Schultz founded their respective countries. So let's do shots.

Howard Schultz and Ray Kroc have a remarkably similar story. It is almost out of a movie script. The only difference being that the McDonald's story was playing in the 1950s, whereas the Starbucks story was playing in the nineteen eighties, both Howard and Ray started out as salesmen. It is only pure luck that introduced both these men to brands that would change their lives and fortune. Howard used to sell coffee making machines and refused to sell milkshake machines. And as luck would have it, Howard received an order from Starbucks for the coffee machines used to sell.

And we received an order from McDonald's for the milkshake machines he used to sell. Both salesmen visited their respective outlets to deliver the order, and both were impressed with what they saw. You would think that the coincidence and the similarity stops here, but it goes on and on. Howard Henry convinced the founders to hire them and both of them got hired. Now, here's the catch. Both these men saw brilliant business opportunity for these brands, which the original founders were not able to see.

Howard wanted Starbucks to begin selling beverages and turn their retail only outlet into a coffee experience. Yes, Starbucks at the time was just a shop. From there, you could purchase coffee beans, go back home and prepare a beverage for yourself. On the other hand, read from McDonald's was trying to convince the McDonald's founders to expand rapidly throughout the country as this was a model he believed would be loved by American families. However, both Howard Schultz and Ray Kroc faced resistance from the founders to do what they wanted to do, and both of them figured out a way to do what they want to do eventually by buying out these respective companies.

The only difference being that Howard Schultz did that in an ethical manner, whereas Ray Kroc is notorious for defrauding the owners and McDonald's founders. When Howard wasn't able to convince the Starbucks founders to begin brewing their coffee. He started his own cafe and a few years later, he bought out Starbucks. On the other hand, when the McDonald's brothers showed disinterest in expanding the company rate with the team of lawyers was able to buy out McDonald's as well. Both these guys were obsessed with the name of their brands as well.

Even though Howard owned cafes with the different name. As soon as he acquired Starbucks, he renamed all of his existing cafes to Starbucks because he loved the name. On the other hand, Ray Kroc was so in love with the name McDonald's and the beautiful arch representing the firm, he fought for the name and kept the name, even though he had bad blood with the McDonald's brothers for whom McDonald's was the family name. It is rather peculiar how similar both their stories are, but the underlying takeaway is that both of them saw immense opportunity in a small business.

They went with their gut and eventually created two giant empires. That's all for today. Until next time, let's do shots.