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Photo courtesy of George CohortMcDonald's Russ czarCohon documents how he cracked Iron CurtainBy Dan CullotonDally Herald Business WriterGeorge Cohon stands to greet you, smiles, cracks a joke and shakes your hand firmly with a pan-sized paw that seems strong enough to mangle an Army drill sergeant’s dibits.The Canadian McDonald’s executive who spent 14 years prying open the Iron Curtain for the Oak Brook-based corporation seems affable and jocular enough to charm Karl Marx into thinking like a capitalist, and that’s not far from the truth of what he did.You don’t have to read far into his book, “To Russia With Fries,” though, to figure out Cohon’s ami able demeanor belies the heart of one dogged and prideful competitor — a guy with enough hubns to turn down a $1 million check from McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, to butt up against the world’s most stultifying bureaucracy for years and, yes, to challenge his bigoted drill sergeant in basic training to an arm wrestling match and then crush three of his finger*.Cohon, a 62-year-old Torontoresident, is the man who opened the first McDonald's in Moscow on Jan. 31, 1990, after a nearlydecade and-a-half-long quest that seemed quixotic at best when he began.Now the senior chairman of McDonald’s Russia and chairman of the Executive Committee of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada, Cohon stopped at Borders Books Music in Oak Brook recently to promote his book, which hit U.S. bookstores last month. The tale he tells with Canadian writer David McFarlane is “almost a complete circle,” he said.It covers the flight of his father’s family from anti-Semitic pogroms in the Ukraine, his childhood in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, the twist of fate that gave him the license for McDonald’s in eastern Canada and the hunch that sent him on a grail-like quest to raise the first golden arches in Pushkin Square.The book is more of a scribble than a circle, though. Rather than follow the chronological arch of Cohon’s life, it jumps from oneanecdote to another, just like the author’s brain, which, he admits flits around like a butterfly. Cohen’s story is filled withenough historic figures — includ ing Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Pierre Trudeau, Moshe Dayan, and Yitzhak Rabin — and events to make him seem like a Forrest Gump with a clue.Kroc gave Cohon the rights to McDonald’s in eastern Canada 32 years ago after a client Cohon wasrepresenting refused the deal, After Cohon opened his first restaurant in Ontario, Kroc offered to buy back the license for $1 million. Cohon refused, however, and grew the franchise until McDonald's bought him out withstock in 1971, making him rich andone of the company’s biggest insider shareholders..Cohon charged into Russia at the height of the Cold War on a hunch. He chanced to meet a group of Russian delegates to the 1976 Montreal Olympics and tookthem to eat at McDonald’s.Their enthusiasm prompted himSee COHON on Page 2
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Sat, Jun 12, 1999
Page 352
Full Page
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USA 04 Nov 2019
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