Do We Need To Fear Oligarchs?

This is a two-part story. The second part will be posted tomorrow.

Back at some point in the mid-1980’s I happened to be seated next to the CEO of Home Depot, which had just been cited in the business media as the fastest-growing big-box chain selling home fix-it supplies and appliances. This was the time when chain stores were replacing small, independent retailers in just about every product group like drug stores, hardware stores and most of all, places to eat.

At some point during the dinner, I asked the Home Depot CEO how they decided where to locate their stores and I was expecting he would start telling me about demographics, neighborhood patterns, and all the other data that they used to figure this out.

“It’s simple Mike,” he said to me. “We locate our stores near a McDonald’s franchise. Those are our customers.”

Between McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Dunk, there are somewhere around 85,000 outlets for these 4 chains in the United States. Currently McDonald’s has about 1,725,000 working in its stores, but at least half of their total crew numbers are part-time employees. So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that this chain supports roughly 800,000 men and women of whom the average age for the total workforce is somewhere around 30 years.