There’s an old proverb that’s worked its way into our collective conscience: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This was the mantra for New Hampshire brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald. The first McDonald’s opened in San Bernardino, California, in May of 1940. The barbecue joint was located just off the iconic Route 66, and while it was quite different from what we know and love today, the slow-cooked barbecue eventually turned into the fast-food giant.
The McDonald brothers moved to California in search of fame and fortune. The brothers wanted to control their own destiny, to be their own bosses. They had a short stint in a movie studio and then in running a theater. In 1937, they set their sights on the food industry. They built a small food stand and served hot dogs and fresh-squeezed orange juice next to the airport. It was a decent business, but the brothers believed that cars would strongly dictate the future. So they took their stand east to San Bernardino, and after many rejections, they eventually secured a loan and built their barbecue stand.
Car hops, attractive young women, delivered food car-side. The McDonald brothers were right; cars were the wave of the future. After the war, car sales boomed, as did travel and eating out. Their drive-in was successful, but they thought they could make it better. They also thought that they should focus on their hamburger, since 80 percent of their sales came from it. So they closed up shop and went back to the drawing board.
With three guiding questions: how could they speed up service, spin a profit, and set themselves apart from the other drive-ins? The answer came from a surprising source. Inspired by Henry Ford’s assembly line in Detroit and the Levitt family’s prefab homes in New York, they applied the same principles to their restaurant. They found a mechanized press to quickly form beef patties, had a friend make an automatic condiment dispenser, and bought the Multi-Mixer, a fancy blender that could produce many milkshakes at once. They used chalk on a tennis court to fashion an assembly line and figured out how to produce food for a consumer in 20 seconds.
And so they opened their new restaurant with a smaller menu of only nine items. Customers didn’t like it at first because it required them to get out of their cars to order at the window. Gone were the car hops; it saved money. Gone were the silverware and plates; it eliminated the need for a dishwasher. And as a result, they could offer food served in cartons and paper at cheaper prices than their competitors: a burger was 15 cents, fries a dime, and a thick milkshake was just 20 cents.
The brothers wanted to have an eye-popping building to highlight their speedy service. They found an architect to design a red and white roof flanked by bright neon arches. It was slow going at first; change is hard, after all. But after a few months, customers started trickling in, and then they started lining up. The McDonald’s brothers had finally found their gold mine, and it was in the form of a golden arch.
Meanwhile, across the country in Chicago, Ray Kroc had tried out a variety of businesses: real estate, piano player, sales. He heard about the success of McDonald brothers who’d purchased their milkshake machines that he sold and went out in person to see for himself.
The McDonald’s brothers were looking for a franchising agent, and Kroc jumped at the opportunity. He was impressed with the effectiveness of their restaurant. He set a goal of opening 1,000 restaurants in the US. In 1955, he opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois. Six years later, the golden torch was passed to Ray Kroc when he purchased the entire business for 2.7 million dollars.
Kroc used his sales experience to create buy-in from the franchisees and the suppliers. They didn’t work for McDonald’s; rather, they worked with McDonald’s. Kroc offered them independence but with a strict adherence to the system: quality, service, cleanliness, and value were absolutes.
In 1961, Kroc started a training program called Hamburger University in Chicagoland to educate future franchise owners on how to run a successful McDonald’s. Graduates received a Bachelor of Hamburgerology degree. In 1963, the world met Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger Happy Clown, the brainchild of Willard Scott, the famed Today Show weatherman.
He’d played the successful Bozo the Clown for years in Chicago, and the folks at McDonald’s asked him to create a character. Ronald McDonald appeared nationally on TV during the 1965 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and also during the 1966 Super Bowl commercials.
Franchises are encouraged to experiment and offer food to cater to their region, and sometimes those creations get added to the national menu. For example, a Cincinnati franchise brought us the Filet-O-Fish in 1965. Pittsburgh’s Big Mac was added in 1968, and Santa Barbara’s Egg McMuffin hit the market in 1975. And while it’s not a national item just yet, if you’ve ever popped into a New England McDonald’s, you will find a lobster roll sandwich on the menu.
The first Ronald McDonald House opened in Philadelphia in 1974. Today, there are over 350 houses in over 60 countries. McDonald’s is as iconic as it is ubiquitous in the U.S. Today, the company has over 36,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. We can all sing jingles from over the years, and we can all still smile at a child’s excitement over a Happy Meal. It took a few tries for the McDonald brothers to get it right, and then it took a try by Ray Kroc to launch McDonald’s to golden heights.
