[TheGRS]

Well now I'm pretty curious, how does McDonald's operate all of their distribution channels with the whole franchise/renting model? Most of the Micky D's I've seen have tons of freezer food that they put through various machines to make all of the food items quickly. I can't imagine they let owners get their primary products from anything other than a distribution center. Do the owners need to buy those products separately? Can they buy from alternate distributors? Do they franchise their distribution somehow? Maybe I'm overthinking all of this. But I am genuinely curious how that factors into the franchise model since that means McDonalds is still very liable for food production.

[greedo]

The owner/operators purchase from approved vendors; I've been out of the game for awhile, but we bought everything through two distributors; bread products from an approved vendor, and everything else from a second vendor.

[_wp3r]

It is all through one distribution vendor with regards to product now. Only plant(equipment) purchases are outside of the primary distributor now.

[greedo]

It's killing me that I can't remember the distributor! Sixteen years of working through them and my mind is a sieve. This was in SoCal, and they had the contract for almost all of the region.

[PhantomGremlin]

I will guess that it was Golden State Foods. They are a supplier to McDonald's, and California is The Golden State.

[greedo]

Ah yes, Golden State Foods! TYVM.

[nuclear_eclipse]

In Ohio and upstate NY in the early 2000's, the distributer we used was named M&M.