History of McDonald’s

In 1937, the MacDonald brothers, Maurice (Mac) and Richard (Dick( McDonald) opened their first restaurant (the Airdrome) in Pasadena, California selling hot dogs, orange juice, coffee and tea.

Although the establishment sold hamburgers, it otherwise bore little relation to the giant franchise it would one day become.

Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. It’s selling 15 cent hamburgers and 10cent fries.

The true founder of the McDonald’s chain, Ray Kroc, was originally a purveyor of the Multimixer automatic milkshake mixer. Ray Kroc mortgaged his home and invested his entire life savings to become the exclusive distributor of a five-spindled milk shake maker called the Multimixer. He had sold Multimixers to many fast food franchisee including Dairy Queen and Tastee-Freez.

In 1954 he went to see the McDonald brothers at their drive in restaurant in San Bernadino California, where, he had heard they had eight of his mixing machine in constant use – obviously indicating a large business volume. He was 52 years old.

McDonald Beef Burger 

Kroc saw a potential of the McDonald’s operation. He met with the brothers and signed an agreement allowing him to sell McDonald’s franchises nationwide. In the mid-1950s, franchising consisted mainly of assigning territories to franchisees of huge up-front fees. However, Kroc wanted to control the McDonald’s operations, He avoided territorial franchises by selling one store franchises at a time, thereby controlling the number of stores that a licensee could operate.

The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall.

In July of that year, he added his second store in Fresno, California. Kroc later purchased the McDonald brothers' equity in the company and led its worldwide expansion.

In 1972, McDonald’s pioneered the fast-food breakfast with the introduction of the Egg McMuffin. McDonald’s opened its first drive through in1975 with goal of service in 50 seconds or less.

McDonald’s is today reinventing itself around its core competencies of fast service, healthy fast food, kids and quality.
History of McDonald’s