Word: kroc
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...strength of such low-priced assembly-line feeding, Ray A. Kroc, 59, has built his Chicago-based McDonald's Corp. in less than seven years from a paper company on paper with $1,000 in assets into the nation's largest drive-in chain-a string of 294 highway stops stretching from Connecticut to California. The McDonald menu is rigidly limited: besides hamburgers and milk shakes, McDonald drive-ins offer only French fried potatoes (10?) and soft drinks (10? and 15?). But on this limited bill of fare, they expect to ring up sales of $60 million this...
Music & Mixers. For restless Ray Kroc, the road to drive-in wealth began with a series of detours. After early stretches as a jazz pianist and musical director of Oak Park, Ill. radio station WGES, Kroc spent 17 years selling paper cups and then Multimixer milk-shake makers. One day in 1954 he stopped at a drive-in run by two brothers named McDonald in San Bernardino, Calif. Impressed by their efficient operation, Kroc struck a bargain with the brothers: in return for use of the McDonald name and techniques, he agreed to pay them 0.5% of all future sales...
...Kroc's Chicago friends scoffed, but once they saw the crowds line up to buy at his first stand, 15 of the scoffers took out franchises. Since then, demand for franchises has become so hot that Kroc has increased his price from the original $900 to $12,500, plus a 2.2% royalty on monthly sales. Currently, there is a paid-up backlog of 60 would-be licensees waiting (some for more than a year) for a Kroc-assigned location. Including down payments on equipment, rent and signs (all paid to Kroc), plus working capital, a licensee needs at least...
...grade chuck (fat content 17% to 20%), formed into 1.6-oz. patties 3⅝ in. in diameter. Each is to be garnished with ¼ oz. onions, one teaspoon of mustard, one tablespoon of catsup and a pickle 1 in. in diameter. A third of the manual is devoted to Kroc's fetish: cleanliness. So strict is he about it that he posted a sign by the coffee machine in the home office threatening that "anyone who throws sugar wrappers or empty paper cups on the floor will be fired...
Scorning relaxation despite his mounting fortune-he owns 52.5% of McDonald's Corp. stock, has given the rest to employees-Kroc still spends half his time darting about the country in a company Aero Commander to size up new locations and licensees. To keep his drive-ins from becoming teen-ager jukebox jungles, he tries to build his trade around the station-wagon set. ("We count church steeples, not cars, when we are deciding where to locate.") And despite mounting competition from a score of rival chains that have copied his system, he confidently expects to have 550 drive...