Word: kroc
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...travels he picked up the beat of a remarkable restaurant in San Bernardino, Calif., owned by two brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald, who had ordered eight mixers and had them churning away all day. Kroc saw the restaurant in 1954 and was entranced by the effectiveness of the operation. It was a hamburger restaurant, though not of the drive-in variety popular at the time. People had to get out of their cars to be served. The brothers had produced a very limited menu, concentrating on just a few items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, soft drinks and milk shakes...
...Kroc, ever the instigator, started thinking about building McDonald's stores all over the U.S.--each of them equipped with eight multimixers whirring away, spinning off a steady stream of cash. The following day he pitched the idea of opening several restaurants to the brothers. They asked, "Who could we get to open them for us?" Kroc was ready: "Well, what about...
...free to run the business his own way, but he never changed the fundamental format that had been devised by the brothers. Kroc added his own wrinkles, certainly. He was a demon for cleanliness. From the overall appearance, to the parking lot, to the kitchen floor, to the uniforms, cleanliness was foremost and essential. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean," was one of his favorite axioms. He was dead on, of course. The first impression you get from a restaurant, through the eyes and nose, is often what determines whether you'll go back...
Still, it's likely Ray Kroc would have moved on to something else if he had found a better idea. Even after McDonald's was well established, Kroc still tried, often with dismal results, to move forward with upscale hamburger restaurants, German-tavern restaurants, pie shops and even theme parks, like Disneyland. He always had a keen sense of the power of novelty and a strong belief in himself and his vision...
Like many of America's great entrepreneurs, Kroc was not a creator--convenience food already existed in many forms, from Howard Johnson's to White Castle--but he had the cunning ability to grasp a concept with all its complexities and implement it in the best possible way. And that's as American as a cheeseburger...