“The high-growth, market-share policy should not bother any franchisee. It simply creates opportunities to invest in more restaurants.” Evaluate this statement.

In 1980 Wayne Kilburn and his wife, Mary Jane, took over the only McDonald’s in Ridgecrest, California, a town of 26,000. The Kilburns prospered in the years to come. Then McDonald’s instituted its “market-share plan” for Ridgecrest. Late in 1995 it put a company-owned restaurant inside the Wal-Mart. A few months later it built another outlet inside the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. A third company-owned store went up just outside the naval base. “Basically, they killed me,” Forbes reported Kilburn saying. And he claimed his volume dropped 30 percent.
In its 1995 Annual Report, corporate headquarters offered another view concerning franchisee contentment. Tom Wolf was a McDonald’s franchisee with 15 restaurants in the Huntington, West Virginia and Ashland, Kentucky markets. He opened his first McDonald’s in 1974, had eight by the end of 1993, and opened seven more in the next two years, including two McDonald’s in Wal-Mart stores and another in an alliance with an oil company; in addition he added indoor Playplaces to two existing restaurants.
Has all this investment in growth made a difference? The Annual Report quotes Tom: “I wouldn’t change a thing. Sales are up. I’m serving more customers, my market share is up and I’m confident about the future. Customers say that the Playplaces and Wal-Mart units are ‘a great idea.’ The business is out there. We’ve got to take these opportunities now, or leave them for someone else to take.”