Episode 60: McDonald's Goes International

"Up Against the Clock":  McDonald's as a Primary Source both in the US and SwedenMcDonald’s has two origin stories in the United States.  The first came in the 1940s as a product of the economic boom immediately following the Second World War and the harnessing of efficiency and quality by Dick and Mack McDonald involving their San Bernardino, California burger stand.  The second is the franchised McDonald’s, spearheaded a few years later by Ray Kroc and built alongside the expanding network of Interstate expressways.  Both iterations are documents of the same general time period and inform us greatly of American society, economics, government, and culture of that era.    But what about when the Golden Arches found their way outside of the United States, to completely different continents?  What is that a product of?  What can McDonalds becoming part of other nations’ popular culture tell us about the time period it happened?  To answer these questions and more, I turned Johan of Edutainment Daily, who is a historian in Sweden.  As you’ll learn, McDonald’s in Sweden and Europe at large is reflective of much different circumstances than in the US.