RE:RE:RE:About car counting,....Hope this helps.
PI
hope McDonald’s stopped officially announcing burgers sold in 1993
I’m tired of waiting for world peace.
I’ve decided to wait for something with better prospects of actually happening in my lifetime.
Therefore, I now am waiting for McDonald’s to sell its 100 billionth hamburger, or at least change its signs to say so.
Those signs have been stuck for almost two decades on “OVER 99 BILLION SERVED.”
I’ve started to worry. In fact, I’ve started eating more hamburgers, hoping I can make a difference. I want to do whatever it takes to help, and I hope others of you will feel the same way.
After all, we are the hometown crowd when it comes to McDonald’s. We are living at ground zero.
The first McDonald’s restaurant opened in 1940 at 14th and E streets in San Bernardino. It became a drive-in, the first of its kind, in 1948, and expanded to become a modest chain of restaurants during the 1950s.
I’m not sure exactly when McDonald’s started posting its numbers, as far as burgers served, but I became aware of it during the mid-’60s. This was shortly after Ray Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, and started to take the company national, then global.
I wish I could tell you that in those days the numbers on the signs were amusingly low. I wish I could claim to remember a time when they said, “MORE THAN 101 SOLD,” and that every time you bought another one, some old guy in overalls would come outside, climb a ladder, and update the sign to reflect your purchase.
That would be a great story, but it would be an exaggeration. In fact, the numbers already were in the millions, even back then.
The company’s official timeline states that the 100million milestone was reached in 1958. By 1960 the number was 400million, and by 1962 it was 700million. The billionth burger was served in 1963 on the Art Linkletter TV show.
Other milestones, according to the official company history, include 5billion by 1969, 15billion by 1974, and 30billion by 1979. Starting in 1983, when the figure was 45billion, things really started taking off. The number grew by 5billion every single year, which brought it all the way up to 95billion in 1993.
That’s where the official tally stops. There is no figure for 1994, when the 100billion plateau should have been reached, nor for any year thereafter. Some time in 1993 or 1994, the signs outside the restaurants were updated to read either “OVER 99 BILLION SERVED” or “BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED,” and that’s the way they have stayed, ever since.
What happened?
The company is tight-lipped with what it calls “proprietary information,” but there are a number of theories, even urban legends, out there.
One story is that the signs were designed with insufficient digits to display the figure “100 BILLION,” and if pushed past “99 BILLION” would revert to “00 BILLION.” That would look bad.
This story makes no sense, though. The signs obviously have plenty of digits. Look at them. If there’s room to say, “BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED,” there’s room to say, “OVER 100 BILLION SERVED.”
Another story is that McDonald’s got so big, it started worrying about looking too big, so it stopped running up the numbers. If that’s true, why post numbers at all, especially an old one that’s been outdated since 1994? Why give the impression you’ve been stalled for almost two decades?
Another theory is that McDonald’s got so huge, so far-flung, so scattered throughout the globe, it simply couldn’t keep track any more of the number of burgers sold. It lost count.
This doesn’t seem likely, either, given the company’s resources and the sophistication of modern accounting technology.
We may never know the real bottom line. Obviously, the 100 billionth McDonald’s burger was sold long ago. And, who knows, maybe I’m the one who bought it.
But until I know for sure, I’m going to keep buying. I’m going to keep eating. I’m going to keep applying the pressure.
I really want those McDonald’s signs to get unstuck, get moving again. The suspense is killing me.
Of course, eating all these burgers might get me first.