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Wondering. It's early 2016 in the office of a marketing agency called Creata. The agency's been tasked with making a Happy Meal toy that would be featured at McDonald's for four weeks in the summer. It needs to be unique and exciting for many of us. When we think back to the Happy Meal toys of our own childhood, we think of figurines tied to famous IP or movie releases, things like plastic Garfields or Little Mermaid characters. But this time around, McDonald's is trying to create something entirely new. At the front of the room, someone jots down a few keywords on a whiteboard. Apps Technology healthy last year, McDonald's launched its first mobile app and Create a wants its toy to get kids and their parents excited about that emerging technology. But the bigger task is the toy should remind parents that Happy Meals can be part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle for kids. For the past decade, McDonald's has suffered as Americans increasingly demand quality, healthy food. So the company's been trying to switch up their Happy Meals to address this. In 2014, they added low fat yogurt as an option for Happy Meal sides. And now they want this new toy to make more people associate McDonald's with good eating, healthy eating. One of the Creata employees has an idea. Hey, what if we made a wearable Step counter? You mean like a Fitbit? Yeah, like a colorful watch kids could wear. It would actually count Steps encouraging kids to be more active. Everyone in the room nods. It's perfect. Fitbits are all the rage in the 2010s, so kids and parents will both be excited about it. And it combines everything McDonald's wants to highlight a commitment to making children healthier and a move in a modern, more tech based direction. Come August, the step it is available in Happy Meals across the US and Canada, bolstered by a massive ad campaign at McDonald's, you can have fun with your food and have fun with Steps. With the step it activity ban in your McDonald's Happy Meal, the idea seems like a win. McDonald's has had a bad year with slumping revenues and needs the boost. But soon enough, the Step it will only create more bad press coming back to burn McDonald's public image and in some cases to literally burn the children who end up wearing it. Step it more like step in it. It's another misfire in McDonald's effort to win back customers. And as McDonald's fumbles, it seems like the better burger businesses just keep on growing. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Did you know Apple Card is designed to help you pay off your balance faster with smart payment suggestions. And because fees don't help you, Apple Card doesn't have any. So if your credit card isn't Apple Card, maybe it should be subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Variable APRs range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on creditworthiness rates as of July 1, 2025. Terms and more@applecard.com after telling hundreds of stories about business battles throughout history, I've learned one constant truth. Having the right support systems in place can make or break a new venture. Trust me, it was a battle even I faced on my business journey. That's why AT and T business makes so much sense for entrepreneurs today. When you're building something from scratch, or even just at the point where you're ready to grow, you need a provider that makes things easy. With AT and T business, you can have reliable, protected Internet connection you can count on so you do not miss a beat. Building your dream might take time and a lot of work, but that doesn't mean it can't be a little easier. Wake up to the power of AT and T Business and turn your vision into reality. Business.att.com From Wondery I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars. In our last episode, we watched as the better burger industry started booming throughout the US and expanding worldwide, with five Guys and Shake Shack leading the pack. But fast casual restaurants had been on the rise since the 90s. You know, places like Chipotle, Sweetgreen and Cava. And though it's still a small segment of the overall food service business, the fast casual category is rapidly expanding. It's now worth an estimated $34 billion in the U.S. alone. Hey, you remember how fast casual chains were part of the demise of Red lobster? Well, by 2016, fast casual burgers are taking a real bite out of the fast food industry. McDonald's has to fight to draw back increasingly health and ingredient conscious customers. Meanwhile, Shake Shack and five Guys compete for space in an expanding market and work to hold on to customers who are beginning to get turned off by their bloated prices. This is episode two, the Price is Right. It's March 16, 2016 in West Hollywood. It's a hot day, but that's not stopping customers from standing in line outside to get a taste of the newest burger on the block. Today, California is getting its first Shake Shack. Founder Danny Meyer and CEO Randy Garutti are both here for the opening. They smile as they cut the ribbon out front for a cheering crowd. The LA menu will have a few exclusive items, like the roadside double their take on L A s famous French dip Sandwich. With just 86 locations, Shake Shack's still a relatively small business compared to Five Guys, but it's become famous worldwide. The press is quick to point out that while an American burger chain opening in LA seems innocuous enough, this is actually a pretty gutsy move. Southern California's firmly been in N out country. In N Out has dominated California since 1948 and has over 300 stores across six Western states. It's got a cult following and is known for its simple menu of burgers, fries and shakes that are never frozen and made to order. The arrival of Shake Shack signals that the burger wars are sizzling, and they'll have to keep encroaching on each other's turf, both in the US and abroad. It's March 21, 2016, just a week after Shake Shack arrived in LA three years ago, Shake Shack and Five Guys both opened their first European locations within 24 hours of each other, in the same London neighborhood that kicked off what the media called the British Burger War. But today, Five Guys is the clear winner in the region. The once small family business with its humble Virginia roots is expanding aggressively into Europe. And while Shake Shack hasn't continued to expand in the UK beyond their one location in London, Five Guys now has 41 locations there and a whopping 1400 stores worldwide. Now, before we go much further, there's a point to be made about something I know longtime Business wars listeners may be thinking that much talked about First Mover Advantage. You know, the company that's first to the market with its service or product, well, sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be. Five Guys in Shake Shack landed in London on the same weekend, but only one stuck the landing. Timing matters, but so does execution. In a new market, the winner isn't always the first through the door. It's the one that adapts fastest. Once they're inside, of course, five Guys has a whole lot more practice and confidence. And it's about to get another ego boost. And that's because today marks another milestone win on the British battlefront. Five Guys gets named Britain's favorite fast food joint in a survey, overtaking Nando's, a popular South African fast casual chain. It also beats out chains like Burger King and kfc. This win proves that, at least across the pond, the classic American burger chain is a potent threat to the OG brands, but those companies are prepared to up their game. It's August 13, 2016, in Arkansas. After months of careful planning by McDonald's and the Creative marketing agency, the chain has finally launched its newest Happy Meal Toy, the Step it fitness watch. In McDonald's eyes, the timing couldn't be better. With the Summer Olympics happening and families excited about staying active, Casey Collier and her young son Cason are at home after a trip to McDonald's. Kaysen is running around the living room with a bright yellow Step it from his Happy Meal. As he paces up and down the room, he excitedly watches the number go up on the plastic watch, counting his steps. But within a few minutes, Cason starts crying. When Casey looks over, she sees that the watch has left a round burn on her son's wrist after just a few minutes of wear. She posts about it on Facebook and soon enough finds out this isn't an isolated incident. To keep children safe and limit the spread of this PR nightmare, McDonald's has to act fast. McDonald's said last week it would stop distributing the Step It Fitness bands and Happy Meals, and now it's recalling 29 million of them in the US and 3.6 million in Canada. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the company received numerous reports of incidents after children wore the bands, including. McDonald's doesn't say what caused the burns, but consumers point to the battery, the casing or the light mechanism as possible explanations. Within a week of the Step it's launch, the product gets recalled and pulled from restaurants as more parents report their kids have been burned by it. But the damage is done. The Step it becomes a laughingstock, with media outlets tearing McDonald's apart. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the Step it doesn't really seem to work at all, with the number of steps it counts going up arbitrarily. One journalist jokingly reviews the product with a headline it was free, but it was terrible. And as the media has a field day, McDonald's stock slumps even further. Foreign 2017 at the Martinique Hotel in Times Square, app developers are gathered here for the Appy Awards, which celebrate the best new apps and mobile technology created by businesses. A small team of developers holds their breath as the winner for the food and beverage category gets announced. A few months back, Shake Shack joined the growing number of restaurants with apps, allowing customers to order from home and skip the long lines that have plagued the business since its inception. The app has been a huge success and tonight reaffirms it. Shake Shack gets announced as the category's winner. It's a well needed win for the Shack. Same store sales have slowed, causing the company's stock to slip. The app is also long overdue. Five Guys launched their own app way back in 2011. Shake Shack hopes that with new tech, they'll be able to beat slumping sales. And as Shake Shack tries to win over customers with their app, McDonald's is also fighting to keep up with the times and change the narrative after its step it debacle. Though McDonald's still dominates the burger market, it's reducing its number of US Stores and still toying with menu changes in an attempt to win back customers to meet rising demands for quality and freshness. In early 2018, it announces that quarter pounders will now be made with fresh beef rather than frozen. Other cooking tweaks have also been made to improve taste, like toasting burger buns and new menu items with ingredients like kale. A few months later, In August of 2018, the chain announces a plan to spend $6 billion on nationwide store makeovers to modernize most of its restaurants by 2020. But with a pandemic looming out of style, stores will soon be the least of anyone's worries. You hear it all the time on business wars. The battles between brands, the bold moves, the breakthroughs. 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Like many other restaurant chains, Shake Shack has been hit hard by the pandemic. Part of the issue is that the majority of Shake Shack's locations are in high density urban areas rather than suburban or rural ones, and business has been especially slow in cities where people are being particularly cautious. Shake Shack is adapting as best it can. However, they've had to temporarily close almost a third of their locations, with those staying open now focusing solely on curbside pickup and delivery. They've even launched an initiative that allows people to buy the ingredients to cook their own Shake Shack burgers at home. Still, March 2020 numbers fell 28.5% compared with the previous year. Average sales sink down to $56,000 per week, down from the 70,000 pre pandemic. But while Shake Shack is working hard to weather the pandemic today, they're also weathering a media storm of criticism. Shake Shack has had to reevaluate its workforce to keep costs down. They just laid off or furloughed over 1,000 employees. It probably wouldn't be such a bad look if not for the fact that they just received a $10 million PPP loan. PPP stands for Paycheck Protection Program. It's an initiative intended to help small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. Wait a minute. Shake Shack Small business Shake Shack is an international chain with 8,000 employees and 189 locations in the US so in the eyes of most consumers, it's not exactly the kind of business this loan was even intended for. Facing backlash, Randy Garuti and Danny Meyer release a joint statement announcing they're returning the PPP money immediately so it can go toward smaller businesses that need it more. They go on a little press tour explaining their decision. They've skirted this PR disaster, but they'll still need to keep adapting to survive the pandemic. Now let this be a lesson in PR Judo. If you're about to get hit, lean into the punch. Shake Shack's quick refund of PPP money wasn't just damage control, it was reputation insurance. They got bruised, that's for sure, but they didn't go down the takeaway Own the mistake before it owns you. It's September 24, 2020 in Myrtle beach and a new Five Guys is opening up now. There are already a handful in the area, but this is a significant one for the chain. Five Guys now has over 1500 locations throughout the world, but this is the first one with a drive thru, which seems shocking when you think about how central drive thrus are for most fast food businesses. The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way fast casual restaurants are operating, making them lean heavily on online ordering systems and new technology. And while Five Guys has spent 34 years without ever operating a drive thru, the pandemic is pushing them to try new business models. Now customers will be able to order online through the app before arriving and pick up their food at the window for a safe, almost contact free experience. And throughout the next few years, five Guys will keep opening more drive thrus across the the country. In late 2021, a year and a half after Five Guys opens its first ever drive thru, Shake Shack follows suit In Maple Grove, Minnesota, they opened their 364th location spurred by a pandemic linked commitment to safety and a need to keep up with the times. They intend for this to be the first of many drive thrus as part of a push to keep growing outside of the major cities. So far in its expansion, the company has largely focused on urban locations, but the pandemic made it clear that it's worth trying to grow in suburban markets too. Shake Shack hopes that drive thrus can help them bring in more customers in the suburbs, where foot traffic is less of a factor than in urban centers. It's June 7, 2022. It's been a tough year for Shake Shack, with the company's stock steadily declining since early 2020 21. But now it's about to plummet. Since first launching burgers in 2004, Shake Shack has used Pennsylvania based Martin's Potato Rolls. But last week it was revealed that the Martin family is among the top financial supporters for Doug Mastriano, a Trump backed Republican in the Pennsylvania State Senate. Often described as a Christian nationalist, Mastriano is being investigated for his potential involvement in the events of January 6th. All of this has led to calls for Shake Shack to switch up their bun supplier and today they've officially announced they're not going to in a statement. Many feel disappointed by Shake Shack holds firm maintaining their commitment to Martin's Calls spread to boycott the chain Shake Shack's stock ends up dropping to the lowest point it's been in two years since the start of the pandemic, tumbling to $39 a share. And internally, investors are about to decide it's time for a change in leadership. While Shake shack stumbles and five guys fights to adapt to the pandemic, McDonald's is on the up and up. That chain has rebounded remarkably well in 2022, with 10% growth and a 5% increase in guests globally. And it seems like cost is likely a big part of that as the pandemic has made more people frugal. Shake Shack and five Guys are facing criticisms for the sky high prices that come with their quality ingredients. It's become harder to justify spending upwards of $8 on a burger, especially when those costs keep rising with inflation at the end of the day. When it comes to pricing better, burgers just can't compete with the golden arches. That's likely why, after years of fumbles, McDonald's seems to be making a comeback. Is your AI built to work with your business's data? IBM helps you integrate and govern unstructured data wherever it lives so your business can have more accurate AI instead of just more of it. Get your data ready for AI@IBM.com the AI built for business IBM. As a small business owner, you know that change is the name of the game. Operational costs, labor markets, tariffs. Wouldn't it be nice if something stayed the same? How about your business Internet rate? Get reliable, secure 5G business Internet from T Mobile for business for $40 a month with a 5 year price guarantee when paired with a voice line. That's stability you need from the part partner you can depend on. Switch now. @t mobile.com bi/taxes and fees guarantee Exclusions like taxes and fees applies to exclusions and details@t mobile.com It's March of 2023 in New York City. Shake Shack CEO Randy Garudi is at home when his phone pings with an email notification. When he looks at his screen and sees that it's from Engaged Capital, he sighs. He does not want to deal with whatever this email contains. Engaged Capital is an activist investor group based out of Newport Beach, California. Like most activist investors, their MO is this Invest in a company while it's low and push to increase shareholder value so they can turn a profit by selling when stocks are higher and for the past four months, Shake Shack has been their main project. Engaged owns a roughly 6.6% stake in Shake Shack, and they've been urging the company to shake up their operations. Garudi opens the email and sees it's a list of demands. In this letter, which Shake Shack's entire board is cc'd on, Engaged Capital says they believe it's possible to double the chain's profitability and expand it into a much bigger business. But for that to happen, they need to commit to making some real changes. And it doesn't seem like Shake Shack's current board is willing to meaningfully address Shake Shack's shortcomings. After a stalemate with Shake Shack's leadership, Engaged has had enough. They say that now they're ready to start a proxy fight. The letter also outlines a proposal to bring on three new directors. Garudi rolls his eyes as he reads the letter, but he's starting to feel the pressure. After months of ignoring the activist investors and their proprietors proposed changes, it's become clear that they're not giving up. And the more time passes, the more dire the situation becomes. Now wait a minute. What happened here? Shake Shack thought they could brush off Engaged Capital. That was a mistake. See activist investors, they don't wait. They escalate. In the time it took for Shake Shack leadership to respond, Engaged was already lining up replacements. If you're a public company shareholder, silence isn't approval. It's patience. And it doesn't last forever. Learn to read the room or they'll rewrite the boardroom. It's a time tested lesson. Put it another way, ignore activist investors at your own risk. In May, two months after Engaged sent its list of demands, things finally take a turn for the better. Shake shack announces its Q1 financial results. And after a tough few years, they seem to be improving. Total revenue has grown nearly 25% from last year and same store sales grew over 10%. But investors still feel frustrated, and many still want to see a change in Shake Shack's leadership. The company now has 460 locations, more than twice what they did pre Pandemic. But their revenue isn't reflecting that. And while they're earning more than they did at the height of COVID it's not enough. The company has an operating loss of 3.2 million this quarter. They're also frustrated with a snail's pace at which Shake Shack is expanding, especially when compared to peers like five guys. When news of the potential proxy battle spreads to the media, Garudi and Shake Shack quickly concede. After months of fighting, they come to an agreement with Engaged. They had a former Domino's Pizza executive to their board and agree to find an independent director to appoint as well. It's not quite what Engaged was vying for, but it's something. Now Shake Shack will just have to hope that this small board change actually leads to better sales and growth. It's December of 2023, about seven months after Shake Shack reached an agreement with angry investors. In the end, Shake Shack had a decent year, at least compared to how they were doing at the height of the pandemic. Their revenue grew around 20% from 2022, and they're planning on opening more locations. But today, a big change is coming to the company because CEO Randy Garuti is on CNBC's Money Moves with an announcement after more than two decades at the company, he'll retire in early 2024 after finding a successor. Garudi has been with Shake Shack since the very beginning, when it was just a hot dog stand in a Manhattan park. And now that it's grown tremendously, becoming a chain with 518 locations in 18 countries, Garudi says it's time to pass the reins to someone else. Perhaps that pressure from investors also informed his choice to step back. Either way, Shake Shack ultimately picks Papa John CEO Rob lynch for the job. Lynch helped build Papa John's into a massive global chain with nearly 6,000 locations worldwide. Shake Shack's original vision was always focused on a smaller quality operation rather than building out a huge chain. But with pressure from Engaged Capital and new leadership, Shake Shack is stepping into a new era focused on global expansion. Here's a little secret from the street. When a growth company taps a franchise veteran, they're not just hiring a CEO. They're sending a message to investors. They're signaling a serious shift in strategy. A new chapter. Rob lynch helped Papa John scale into a global powerhouse. And his arrival at Shake Shack shows they're trading boutique vibes for blitz expansion. That means systems, metrics and speed. These are things that founder led cultures sometimes resist. But growing at scale needs more than just vision. It needs a blueprint. And Lynch's mission is to draw one up fast. Rob lynch immediately gets to work. He starts by trimming the fat, closing nine US shake ship that are underperforming, and plans to open 80 more Shake Shack locations within a year. And he's looking for ways to expand even more. It's early March 2024. A customer walks into Five Guys and orders a classic meal, a bacon cheeseburger with a soda and a small order of fries. The cashier calculates the the customer's total, then smiles. That'll be 21.91. How would you like to pay? The customer tries to hold back their shock. Oh, Visa. The customer pays and waits for their order. Still trying to figure out how they just coughed up almost 22 bucks for a burger and a small side with tip. It worked out to over $24. They take a picture of the receipt, post it to Reddit. From there, it rapidly spreads across the Internet. Someone else downloads the photo and posts it to X, where it goes viral. The photo of that single receipt gets seen over 25 million times. The top comment, which accuses Five Guys of highway robbery has over 15,000 likes. Look, Five Guys has never been about the cheapest burger. That's not their story. Five Guys is about quality. But once your prices hit meme territory, it's not just a PR problem. You've got a brand problem. 20 years ago, a pricey burger was just a wallet pinch. Today, it's potentially viral fodder for social media. Here's a hard truth. No matter how good the burger, customers aren't just buying food. They're buying a narrative. They're buying a story about value. Pay a little extra, get a lot better. But if that story gets rewritten by Reddit and not by you, well, you've already lost the plot. Now what? So called better burgers have always been more expensive than fast food. That's down to the price of higher quality fresh ingredients. In the early 2000 and tens, when better burgers earnestly entered the fast casual market, those were categorized as burgers in the $8 range, and people were willing to pay those prices. But after the pandemic led people to pull back on unnecessary spending, customers started reassessing how much they're willing to pay for a burger, especially when prices are well above the $8 range. Now, across the Internet, people discuss the rapid rise in prices at 5 guys, with many saying it's turned them off from eating there. Some people actually defend the chain, saying that high costs are worth it for the better quality. But they're in the minority. The story quickly gets picked up, and a five Guy spokesperson tells a news outlet that the high costs reflect bigger portions and quantities, quality ingredients. He uses some of the same language five Guys has leaned on since their inception, emphasizing that nothing in the store is frozen. But five Guys isn't the only chain with rising costs. After inflation peaked in 2022, many other big fast food and fast casual chains have had to raise their prices. Even the bigger chains like McDonald's and Wendy's are facing backlash for their own rising costs. But five Guys costs were high to start with. It's always been recognized as among the most expensive burger joints, with prices much higher than rivals like In N Out or Shake Shack. Inflation and the economic uncertainty brought along by the pandemic make more people question whether a $24 burger meal is really worth that. But even as customers, especially younger people like millennials, berate from 5 guys sky high prices online, what do you know? The business still seems to be thriving because just a few months later they announced plans to open 50 new stores in Europe every year, continuing their global expansion. And as Five Guys expands, McDonald's is left fighting yet another PR nightmare on the home front in the States. And this time it'll put customers lives at risk. It's October 18, 2024. A 15 year old girl in Grand Junction, Colorado is getting airlifted to the nearest children's hospital. Her mom sits in the helicopter beside her, squeezing her hand. Camberlin is a healthy high school freshman on the softball team, but her health has rapidly taken a turn for the worse. About a week ago, she started experiencing high fevers and nausea. Now her symptoms have rapidly progressed and it's become clear she's experiencing kidney failure due to an E. Coli infection. As soon as she arrives at the hospital, she'll go through multiple rounds of dialysis and it'll quickly become clear that the infection that almost took her life came from somewhere she never would have expected. A McDonald's Quarter Pounder. For the past few years, McDonald's has been advertising their quarter pounders more fiercely than ever. They made the switch to fresh preservative free meat for what they called a juicier burger and have been on the warpath trying to get customers to try their higher quality spin on a classic. But now, across social media, people are urging Americans not to order the burger because Camberlan is not the only person infected. An E. Coli outbreak is spreading rapidly among consumers. According to the CDC, at least 104 people across 14 states were infected with E. Coli from the slivered onions on McDonald's Quarter Pounders. 34 were hospital hospitalized and one died. Joe Erlinger, the president of McDonald's USA, goes on the offensive, talking to journalists and trying to convince people McDonald's is still safe. We are very confident that you can go to McDonald's and enjoy our classics. We took swift action yesterday to remove the quarter pounder from our menu. This was swift and decisive action by us, but by this point, the damage is done. It's already been a tough year for McDonald's. Around two months ago, they posted their biggest decline in global sales in four years. Since the pandemic started, though, McDonald's greatest edge against Better Burgers has always been its low prices. It's been harder to keep costs low, and they're bleeding customers even as they try to introduce new value meals and deals. And the E. Coli outbreak is another hard blow. As McDonald's scrambles to save their already faltering public image, stock prices fall from $316 to $292 in a matter of days. This latest PR crisis joins a long list of nightmares McDonald's has dealt with in the past few decades. But while they've all tainted McDonald's image and caused McDonald's stock to suffer, they share something else in common. They're very, very temporary. It seems the public's memory is about as short as fast food wait times. Because despite all the peaks and valleys in McDonald's stock prices, it's always been on an upwards trajectory, recovering past every hiccup, no matter how major. So as with everything else, the public soon forgets about The E. Coli, um, outbreak. And McDonald's keeps on growing. When Better Burgers started emerging as a real potential threat around 2010, McDonald's stock hovered near $60. Fifteen years later, it's worth over $300, more than five times as much. Hey, kids, ever wonder how Mayor McCheese keeps getting reelected? Think about it. McDonald's has made more comebacks than a 90s boy band. And that's no accident. When you got tens of thousands of stores, global supply chains, and decades of brand equity behind you, even big scandals start to look like speed bumps. Oh, customers might rage, tweet, but they'll still pull into the drive thru next week. See, that's the thing. Scale creates resilience, for better and for worse when it comes to consumers. Maybe. But scale can magically forgive a multitude of sins. And in a business built on volume, that's often the ultimate insurance policy. Today, under new management, Shake Shack is rapidly transforming in exactly the way shareholders had hoped. CEO Rob lynch said. Said the company expects revenues to grow by 16 to 18%, to just shy of $1.5 billion in 2025. And in January, almost a year into his tenure at the Shack's helm, he announced plans to nearly triple the number of restaurants to 1500. That massive expansion would scale up Shake shack to be nearly the same size as Five Guys. For its part, five Guys has still kept the same business model it's had since Jerry Morrell started it in 1986 simple menu, quality ingredients and nothing frozen. As it's scaled, it's kept the peanut oil fries and quality patties it's now famous for. The approach has worked. It currently has 1700 locations worldwide with 1500 in development, meaning it's planning on almost doubling its footprint, though the timeline for that expansion is not exactly clear. And while the fast casual market is still expanding with an expected growth of almost 7% annually through to 2033, seems they'll never truly compete with the giants like McDonald's, no matter how much McDonald's stumbles. The House of Ronald currently has over 43,000 thousand locations worldwide, with plans to have 50,000 by 2027. After a challenging year and a tumultuous few decades, people keep returning to the brand even as they claim to want better quality and healthier options. Because at the end of the day, low prices will keep drawing those customers back from Wondery this is episode two of McDonald's versus the Burger Revolution for Business Wars. A quick note about the recreations you've been hearing. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said at the time. No scenes or dramatizations, but they're based on historical research. I'm your host, David Brown. Gabriel Joliet wrote this story. Sound designed by Josh Morales. Kyle Randall is our lead sound designer. Fact checking by Will Tavlan. Our managing producer is Desi Blalott. Produced by Tristan Donovan of Yellow Ant and Kate Young. Our senior managing producer is Callum Plews. Our senior producers are Emily Frost and Dave Schilling. Karen Lowe is our producer emeritus. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louie. For wondering what do you think makes the perfect snack? Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient. Could you be more specific? When it's cray venient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM. I'm seeing a pattern here. Well, yeah, we're talking about what I crave, which is anything from am, pm. What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's Cravenience ampm. Too much good stuff.