HW 7b

Fast Food Nation By Eric Schlosser

Chapter 4 summary: When compared to Colorado Springs, Pueblo, CO is decades behind, but as more and more franchises spring up, their differences start to become more subtle. Dave Feamster stands out in his Little Caesars Pizza Franchise, being the white owner among a mainly Latino workforce. They are like a family and Dave himself treats them as such. He pays their college tuition's as long as they maintain a 3.0 GPA. Opening a Franchise isn't easy or cheap. They cost anywhere from $10,000 so $1.5 million. Their contracts are often filled with hundreds of tiny print, where if you don't do something to their liking. Then they can close you for breach of contract and you loose most of what you invested.

Chapter 4 Quotes: "Since Feamster did not have the money, the company gave him a loan. Before selling a single pizza he was $200,000 in debt."(p.102)

"According to a 1995 investigation by Canada's Financial Post, Subway's whole system seems "almost as geared to selling franchises as it is to selling sandwiches." (p.100)

"Becoming a franchisee is an odd combination of starting your own business and going to work for someone else. At the heart of a franchise agreement is the desire by two parties to make money while avoiding risk." (p.94)

Questions/Responses:

1. How does the consistent opening of new franchise restaurants compare to that of non-franchise restaurants? And what is their success rate?
2. Based on the number of opportunities that they provide not only for the owner, but for the new jobs it creates, is a franchise the enemy or the savior, especially in these tough financial times when saving money is key?
3. I am really disgusted by the way Subway is run. The simple fact that people have to keep opening restaurants in order to keep making money, is simply not fair on behalf of those who work in the restaurants and those who own them because there is such a huge disconnect between the two, and therefore a drop in quality.

Chapter 5 Summary: J.R. Simplot is the definition of American Ingenuity. By age 36 he had been one of the principal suppliers to the military for dried potatoes and owned one of the biggest potato farms in the U.S. In the 1950's he began to sell frozen sliced potatoes known as french fries. In 1965 he began selling french fries to Ray Kroc, the owner of MacDonalds. As the number of restaurants Ray owned multiplied, so did the amount of money Simplot made. The Business of french fries is extremely competitive, so what most companies do is they hire companies from the flavor industry to come and make their foods taste and smell better, chemically. Through artificial meals, companies are making their food taste, and smell better.

Chapter 5 Quotes: "J.R. Simplot, an eighth grade dropout, is now one of the richest men in the United States." (p.115)

"Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of french fries at a fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer who grew the potatoes." (p.117)

"Approximately ten thousand new processed food products are introduced every year in the united states. Almost all of them require flavor additives. And about nine out of every ten of these new food products fail. (p.124)

Quotes/Response:

1. How do artificial additives really affect us in terms of buying one product or another? Does this mean that all artificial flavorings should be added under that level?
2. I think that is very upsetting that ideas and options like J.R. Simplot are so very very scarce now. We can't drop out of school at eighth grade now and expect to have a job then slowly move up. Almost all people with only a high school degree don't get as far as up as he did.
3. How did the revoutionizing of french fries mark an important milestone not only in our own productivity, but in our own laziness, where we would have someone make our food for us, and all we had to do was warm it back up?

Chapter 6 Summary: Hank is a Colorado rancher. He lives and works on his farm with his wife and daughters. He showed me the difference between raising cattle and "Raping the land." When compared to his land, you see the runoff from the city's drainage system and the damage that is doing to the environment. There were trusts such as the Steel Trust, Tobacco Trust and the Sugar trust. They were when a few major players controlled the price of the goods on their own. In the beginning of the 1910's there was a beef trust too, when the owners of the five major slaughterhouses got together to designate the price of beef. Now-a-days the market hasn't changed all that much, you can't report on any misdoings in the market and the cost of being a farmer is so expensive that most farmers are now selling their land in order to be able to pay for it.

Chapter 6 Quotes: "small pieces of reconstituted chicken, composed mainly of white meat, that were held together by stabilizers, breaded, fried, frozen, then reheated." (p.140).

As a result, cattle are much bigger today; fewer cattle are sold; and most American beef cannot be exported to the European Union, where the use of bovine growth hormones has been banned." (p.142)

"It would be wrong to say that Hank's death was caused by the consolidating and homogenizing influence of the fast food chains, by monopoly power in the meatpacking industry, by depressed prices in the cattle market, by the economic forces bankrupting independent ranchers, by the tax laws that favor the wealthy ranchers, by the unrelenting push of Colorado's real estate developers. But it would not be entirely wrong." (p.146).

Questions/Responses:

1. How does Hank's suicide send a deeply personal message about the state that our food economy is in, when the workers are being driven to self mutilation by the intense competition and relentless race to stay on top?
2. Through the different Trusts that used to control the major industries that ruled the economy so long ago, we can see new patterns emerging that these few major companies run all the little ones, so in the end they are still on top.
3. In what ways are the reoccurring symbols such as cheating and a small group controlling most of the power not only significant to the food industry, but to our own government?