Franchise: the golden arches in Black America

Abstract

Marcia Chatelain has written an enlightening and meticulously researched business and cultural history about McDonalds and the entwinement of the fast-food industry in the lives of Black Americans. The book should be of interest to scholars of consumer culture, especially those with an interest in the socio-cultural dimension of business, marketing and race. McDonalds is a fascinating, almost ubiquitous, cultural reference worldwide, due to the size and impact of the corporation – a corporation based on the franchise model. Chatelain offers a rich and nuanced cultural business history firmly focused on the rise of the company in America, its birthplace, and the complicated relationship between the company and Black Americans as consumers, employees and franchise holders. In many places, Chatelain also unfolds her narrative to include other players and trends in the fastfood industry. The book is divided into seven chapters charting different historical developments and themes. One of the key arguments of the book, elucidated as a theme over several chapters, is how the growth of the fast-food industry benefitted from the extension of civil rights, desegregation and political initiatives to support Black business ownership, and how Black activism played a central role in ensuring that the company made good on these opportunities. Chatelain compellingly shows how such efforts were often met with resistance within the company, at first, only to become central pillars of the corporation once they became seen as a profitable strategy. For example, Chatelain shows how the fight for civil rights for Black Americans played out in restaurants, where Black Americans would launch sit-ins in their finest clothes often forcefully removed and harassed. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which formally ended segregation, Black Americans were often treated with less respect in restaurants and diners, and after desegregation McDonald’s, previously centred on separated drive-thru, began to offer “dine-in”meals where social class and race mattered less. Furthermore, McDonald’s offered meals at a competitive price point and marketed itself as a place where one did not have to dress up for the occasion. Throughout, Chatelain painstakingly shows how the corporation on the one hand set itself up as a comparatively more inclusive space, but also shows the underlying racist implications of this as a conscious marketing geared towards Black Americans, that mirrored greater societal narratives. Another track in Chatelain’s narrative traces how political support for Black business ownership, supported almost unilaterally across the political spectrum, in lieu of comprehensive social reform to better the lives of Black Americans, came to include Black business ownership through the franchise model. Again, after resistance, McDonald’s saw a business case in offering franchise rights to Black business owners in Black neighbourhoods. Chatelain unfolds the complexity of this development. On one hand, Chatelain shows how franchising presented opportunities for wealth accumulation, and on the other hand, how this development enrolled Black business owners in a larger corporate structure dominated by white owners not always respectful of their wishes. – At times making only rundown buildings available in areas with high insurance costs to be borne by the franchisee, while at other times actively supporting Black ownership. Moreover, Chatelain elucidates how this development tied into the underinvestment in Black neighbourhoods, lack of proper