McDonald’s sells more Coca-Cola: Cited in “Welcome to McDonald’s.”
about $4.25 a gallon: According to Business Week, Burger King annually pays Coke $170 million for 40 million gallons of syrup. That works out to a cost of about $4.25 a gallon — or 3.3 cents an ounce. It is safe to assume that McDonald’s, an even larger customer, buys its syrup at a price that is equivalent, if not lower. See Foust, “Man on the Spot.”
A medium Coke that sells for $1.29: The standard soft drink ratio is one part syrup to five parts carbonated water. A small Coke at McDonald’s contains about 2.6 ounces of syrup; a medium Coke, about 3.5 ounces. For the composition of soft drinks, see Lauren Curtis, “Pop Art,” Food Product Design, January 1998.
55 A 1997 study: Cited in Jacobson, “Liquid Candy,” p. 10.
“It’s our responsibility to make it clear”: Quoted in Martha Groves, “Serving Kids… Up to Marketers,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1999.
The principal said Cameron could have been suspended: See Frank Swoboda, “Pepsi Prank Fizzles at School’s Coke Day,” Washington Post, March 26, 1998.
“I don’t consider this a prank”: Quoted ibid.
“the earth could benefit rather than be harmed”: Quoted in Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”
56 About twenty million elementary school students: Cited in “Pizza Hut Book It! Awards $50,000 to Elementary Schools,” PR Newswire, June 6, 2000.
The group claims that its publications: See Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”
“Now you can enter the classroom”: Quoted in Alex Molnar, “Advertising in the Classroom,” San Diego Union-Tribune, March 10, 1993.
“Through these materials, your product”: Quoted in Consumers Union, “Captive Kids.”
eight million of the nations middle, junior, and high schooclass="underline" Cited in “Prepared Testimony of Ralph Nader before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,” Federal New Service, May 20, 1999.
At least twenty school districts: Cited in Diane Brockett, “School Cafeterias Selling Brand-Name Junk Food,” Education Digest, October 1, 1998.
The American School Food Service Association estimates: Cited in Dan Morse, “School Cafeterias are Enrolling as Fast-Food Franchisees,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 1998.
“We try to be more like the fast food places”: Quoted in Janet Bingham, “Corporate Curriculum: And Now a Word, Lesson, Lunch, from a Sponsor,” Denver Post, February 22, 1998.
57 The Coca-Cola deal that DD Marketing negotiated: For the story of District 11’s shortfall, see Cara DeGette, “The Real Thing: Corporate Welfare Comes to the Classroom,” Colorado Springs Independent, November 25-December 1, 1998.
3. Behind the Counter
For the history of the Pikes Peak region, I relied on Carl Ubbelohde, Maxine Benson, and Duane A. Smith, A Colorado History (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing, 1995); Patricia Farris Skolout, Colorado Springs History A to Z (Colorado Springs: Patricia Farris Skolout, 1992); Judith Reid Finley, Time Capsule 1900: Colorado Springs a Century Ago (Colorado Springs: Pastword Publishing, 1998); and two entertaining books by Marshall Sprague, Money Mountain: The Story of Cripple Creek Gold (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), and Newport in the Rockies: The Life and Good Times of Colorado Springs (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1987). Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt, contains an excellent chapter entitled “Space Mountain: Generals and Boosters Build Colorado Springs,” pp. 174–210.
For the driving forces behind sprawl, I relied principally on: F. Caid Benfield, Matthew D. Raimi, Donald D. T. Chen, Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl Is Undermining America’s Environment, Economy, and Social Fabric (Washington, D.C.: National Resources Defense Council, 1999); James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Touchstone, 1994); Philip Langdon, A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). John C. Melaniphy’s Restaurant and Fast Food Site Selection (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992) helped me see how the economic needs of the fast food chains have directly contributed to the nationwide spread of sprawl. Two site selection experts explained how the latest geographic information systems combine satellite data, census data, and market research to determine the best location for a new fast food restaurant: Libby Duane, the marketing director at SRC LLC, whose “Site Analyzer” is used by Church’s Chicken and Popeye’s, among other chains; and Elliott Olson, the chairman of the Dakota Worldwide Corporation, which distributes a PC version of the Quintillion software developed by McDonald’s. Mr. Olson was kind enough to send me a demonstration disk of Quintillion.
Space does not permit me to list all of the people whom I interviewed about the economic, cultural, and social life of Colorado Springs today. Some people, however, were especially helpful or insightfuclass="underline" guidance counselors Cheryl Griesinger at Cheyenne Mountain High School, Mike Foreman and Nancy Martinez at Manitou Springs High School, Jane Trogdon at Harrison High School, and Chris Christian at Palmer High School; Elisa, Carlos, and Cynthia Zamot; the architect Morey Bean; Richard Conway of Conway’s Red Top Restaurant; Richard and Judy Noyes at the Chinook Bookshop; Rocky Scott, president of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation; Cara DeGette, news editor of the Colorado Springs Independent; Amy D. Haimerl, editor of the Colorado Springs Business Journal; Major Mike Birmingham at the U.S. Space Command; Joe Brady, co-owner of The Hide & Seek; Toast and Marcea, proprietors of the Holey Rollers Tattoo Parlor; and the lovely elderly woman who gave me a guided tour of the Focus on the Family headquarters complex, whose name I will not mention. For a sense of James Dobson’s philosophy, I read his child-rearing guide The New Dare to Discipline (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1992) and Gil Alexander-Moegerle, James Dobson’s War on America (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997).
Robert Emerson’s The New Economics of Fast Food has useful material on the labor costs and policies of the major chains, as do John Love’s Behind the Arches and Big Mac, by Max Boas and Steve Chain. Robin Leidner and Ester Reiter are sociologists who worked at chain restaurants in order to write about the nature of such employment. Reiter’s Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer (Montreaclass="underline" McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1991) focuses on Burger King, while Leidner’s Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) looks at McDonald’s. Quick Service that Sells!: The Art of Profitable Hospitality for Quick-Service Restaurants (Denver: Pencom International, 1997), written by Phil “Zoom” Roberts and Christopher O’Donnell, reveals some motivational tricks of the trade.