19 THE HAMBURGERS THAT
DIDN’T GET BURNT

In 1992, the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating up Rodney King sparked the worst riots that Central South Los Angeles had ever witnessed. The local population were caught up in a wave of looting, rioting and burning that saw cars and houses destroyed.

Businesses were also destroyed – windows smashed, goods and merchandise looted and then the buildings were torched. Yet amongst all this destruction, the five McDonald’s restaurants in the riot and fire zone escaped unscathed.

It was vindication of a policy that founder Ray Kroc had always advocated: “We believe a business should put something back into a community and that this pays dividends”; advice that the five franchise holders had followed. As Chuck Ebeling, then Director of Corporate Communications for McDonald’s, recalled some years later:

“In the area of South Central LA, a five-square miles radius of devastation, the outcome was like a bomb. It resembled Nagasaki. Buildings had been looted and set alight. It was martial law. The streets were dangerous. Many people were killed in the frenzy, either as a statement of opposition between the established powers and the disenfranchised or as a gateway for much deeper held sentiments regarding race, class, poverty and divisions between the entitled and disentitled.

“In the wasted landscape of South Central LA, everything had been destroyed. Everything except for five buildings. In the post-apocalyptic aftermath, surrounded by smoldering ruins and debris, there were five buildings which had been untouched. Not a broken window. Not a slash of spray paint. All flooded in their usual operable fluoro lights.

“These five buildings all had one thing in common. They were all McDonald’s.”

Months later, sociologists at Stanford University came across this data. They were also intrigued. They sent teams into the field to get to the bottom of the phenomenon. They went in to interview many of those who had been involved in the riots. They went in to discover what the story was; not why the devastation had taken place, but why it hadn’t taken place at McDonald’s.

When asked why McDonald’s was spared, the answers were the same across all interview centres. The general conversations went something like this:

“They are one of us.”

“What do you mean?”

“They‘re looking after us.”

“How could McDonald’s be looking after you?”

“Because we like to play basketball. There’s nothing else to do except get high and shit. McDonald’s gives us balls.”

It turned out that McDonald’s had in fact supplied a number of basketballs to youth groups and basketball centres in these low socio-economic areas. Not thousands of balls. A few hundred.

“And the old men. My old man. They don’t have jobs or nothin’. They don’t have nowhere to live. McDonald’s gives them free coffee.”

It was true. In that area, McDonald’s supplied several hundred free cups of coffee each morning. In terms of its proitability, “it was a piss in the ocean”.

The business benefit of such benevolent acts isn’t always so apparent, but if anyone in McDonald’s ever questions their importance, they are told Ray Kroc’s words and shown a short video. It shows the mayhem that struck Los Angeles and tells the story of the restaurants that were left standing, left to conduct business as usual, when all around others were burnt out.

And the moral is that a brand is a unit of social currency and should play a role in the wider community. What does your brand contribute to the local or wider community in which it exists?