Everything I Need To Know I Learned At McDonald’s: CEO

CNBC.com:

What’s the best training for a CEO?

“[McDonald’s] was the best job I ever had,” Tariq Farid, founder and CEO of Edible Arrangements, told CNBC’s Squawk Box. “I started working at McDonald’s at 15. It’s a phenomenal concept, sticking kids in the kitchen, teaching them systems, that this goes before this. I loved the system, and going through it, you really wanted to compete.”

Farid, whose company’s 1,100 franchises are in the U.S. in 50 other countries, took what he learned about systems, training and customer service, and open a flower business at the age of 17. In the process of looking for new concepts and ways to gain more customers, he came up with edible flowers fashioned from fruit.

“I saw that people wanted the ‘wow’ factor, he said. And while it took a little while for the concept to catch on, by 1999, his Edible Arrangements concept opened in East Haven, Conn., and he began franchising the concept.

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