Kari Swenson, co-owner of 5 McDonald’s in Montgomery County, talked about owning a McDonald’s franchise.  Her father was an administrator of a community college, and a long time Rotarian, in Northern California.  She graduated from the University of VT.  After teaching English in a Czech Republic school, she got an MBA degree and was an owner of a small organic cafe.  Her husband’s mother operated a one store McDonald’s franchise for 17 years.  Seven years ago she and her husband bought the five store McDonald’s franchise.  There is a 4 year approval trial period.  Costs per store are between $500k and $2m, with a 25% cash requirement and a 7 year note.  McDonald’s Corporation’s revenue only comes from the real estate’s lease.  All products and supplies come from a DC area coop.  Kari spends most of her time on financial management and the “McDonald’s (customer satisfaction) Score Card”. .

Brian Karem is an Emmynominated producer, seasoned editor and veteran journalist, skilled at directing media teams to generate outstanding news, political documentary and fearless investigative coverage. He said six companies own 80% of the newspaper coverage. He was critical of the NY Times for its inexperienced resent collage graduate reporters, and “pact journalism” responding to phone bank “echo chambers”. Brian prided himself for vetting local news which is often misreported with unvetted blog reporting. On politics he was critical of Trump and said the winner of the 8th Congressional District Democratic Primary was bought by businessman’s late entry for 13 million dollars – the largest sum in US history.

The North Bethesda Rotary Club was proud to host Mrs. Rebecca Leef, administrator of Walt Whitman High School, and Mrs. Sonja Maroni for the inauguration of their school Interact Club. Also attending were Mrs. Petra Palennzatis, Principal of the German International School, and Mrs. Catherine Levy, Principal of the French International School. All four officers of the new Interact Club are foreign students: Shehrez Chaudri, Tjis Kusee, Yingzhe Liu, and Yichen Sun (Liu and Sun from China). Rotary DG Ken Solow talked about the merits of Interact, the development of the next generation of world leaders, and the 9 month international student exchange programs