'The Founder' Clip: Michael Keaton Wants to Take the Milk Out of McDonald's Milkshakes (Exclusive)

How did McDonald’s successfully transform itself from a single California storefront to an international fast food empire? Two words: Powdered milkshakes. Okay, so that wasn’t the only secret behind the Golden Arches’s rapid expansion. But as the new drama, The Founder — which opens in theaters on Jan. 20 — illustrates, the decision to switch from milk-based milkshakes to the powdered variety benefitted the fledgling franchise’s bottom line, allowing them to more effectively manage operating costs for its entire network of restaurants. In the process, though, they arguably sacrificed some of the quality that comes with using authentic ingredients to make authentic food.

Related: ‘The Founder’ Trailer: Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc Sinks His Teeth Into McDonald’s

The circumstances behind that momentous decision are dramatized in this exclusive clip from The Founder, which pits actual McDonald’s founders Richard and Maurice McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) against businessman Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), who transformed the brothers’ burger joint into the behemoth it is today. It’s the numbers-crunching Kroc who makes the case for switching to milkshake powder, while food-first Richard argues in favor of keeping dairy in this dessert treat.

The struggle between those competing philosophies continues to play out through the rest of the movie — which was directed by The Blind Side‘s John Lee Hancock and written by The Wrestler‘s Robert Siegel — as Kroc slowly, but surely, steers McDonald’s away from the brothers’ original vision. Once forecasted as a 2016 Oscar contender, The Founder has unfortunately been pushed to the side of the year’s awards race. But its depiction of the eternal conflict between the food business and the business of food provides audiences with plenty of food for thought.