Ray Kroc: A milkshake machine salesman in his fifties
He spent decades selling paper cups and milkshake mixers. In his fifties he visited one small restaurant that bought eight of his machines and saw a system worth copying.
A salesman for thirty years
Ray Kroc was born in 1902 near Chicago. He sold paper cups for years, played piano for money on the side, and then became the sales agent for a five spindle milkshake mixer. It was steady work but not a fortune, and by the early 1950s sales were falling.
Eight machines in one kitchen
In 1954 he heard that a single hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California, was running eight of his mixers at once. He went to see it. Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald had cut their menu to a few items and set up the kitchen like a production line, so food came out fast and the same every time.
The turn
Kroc, then in his early fifties, persuaded the brothers to let him sell franchises. He opened his own restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955 and spent years on the detail: suppliers, training, and the same standards in every kitchen. In 1961 he bought the brothers out.
What came of it
The company he built became one of the largest employers of young people in the world, and its training school is still known as Hamburger University. He wrote his own account in Grinding It Out (1977).
He spotted the idea because he paid attention to his customers. A good salesman learns how other people's work is done, not just what they buy.
The myth: Kroc did not found McDonald's and did not invent its fast kitchen. The McDonald brothers did; his part was turning it into a franchise system.
Where the facts come from: Ray Kroc with Robert Anderson, Grinding It Out (1977); Company history, corporate.mcdonalds.com.
