When ray kroc he was a boy, his father took him to a phrenologist, a practitioner who said he could predict the future by reading the bumps on people’s heads. Kroc’s graph revealed that his future would be in the food industry. Whether it was psychic power or sheer luck, the phrenologist was correct. In addition to identifying the most popular trends. Kroc went further and founded the modern industry of fast food and created the number one string of its type: McDonald’s.
Like many entrepreneurs, Kroc started working at a very young age. While in elementary school, the future “king of fast food” started a business selling lemonades on his street in Chicago, then worked in a grocery store and spent an entire summer in the drink area of his uncle’s store. of the. Through these early experiences, Kroc began to see the world as a great place to sell.
From dreams to franchises
As a teenager, Kroc had no patience for school, so he dropped out and took a job as a salesman at the Lily-Tulip Cup Co. Young, ambitious, and willing to work long hours, Kroc quickly became the best salesman in the company. While selling mugs he met Earl Prince, a customer who had invented a machine to make five shakes at a time called Multimixer.
Fascinated by the speed and efficiency of the machine, Kroc knew a business opportunity when he saw one. Thus, at the age of 37, he left the company and obtained exclusive marketing rights for the machine. He spent the next decade and halfway across the country promoting the Multimixer to restaurant and fountain owners.
As Kroc turned 50, sales began to decline. During the early 1950s, people left the cities to move to the suburbs, which caused many soda fountains to close. But a small restaurant in San Bernardino, Calif., asked for eight machines. Intrigued by the order, Kroc went to California to see for himself the kind of restaurant that needed to churn out 40 shakes at a time. There he found a small hamburger joint owned by two brothers, Dick and Maurice McDonald.
The Man Behind the Golden Arch: The Incredible Career of Ray Kroc
The McDonald brothers’ restaurant was nothing like what Ray had seen before. In contrast to restaurants of the time, it had a drive-thru model, had no indoor seating, and the menu was limited to burgers, fries, sodas, and milkshakes, all of which were produced online, allowing customers to order and get your orders in a minute.
Kroc quickly calculated the profits he would make by putting hundreds of these stores across the country. But when he approached the McDonalds with the idea, they told him they weren’t interested in doing it themselves. So Kroc offered to do it. The brothers agreed and gave Kroc exclusive rights to sell the McDonald’s method.
Ray opened his first McDonald’s in April 1955 in a Chicago suburb called Des Plaines. He used this clean and efficient restaurant as a showcase for sell franchises in the rest of the United States. For every franchise he sold, Ray earned 1.9 percent of total sales, of which he gave the McDonald brothers half. Kroc sold 18 franchises in his first year, but was surprised to find that the profits were very small. In his interest in buying McDonald’s, he made the brothers a deal they couldn’t refuse, but it wasn’t allowing him to make any money.
What does McDonald’s sell? Real estate
Then Kroc met Harry Sonnenborne, a financial genius who taught him how to make money not selling hamburgers, but selling real estate . Under Sonnenborne’s plan, Kroc created a company that would buy and lease the land where all McDonald’s would be located. In this way, the franchisees paid a monthly rent for the use of the territory or gave him a percentage of their profits. By owning the land where the franchises were built instead of just selling the franchises, Kroc secured the profit. Using his real estate strategy, Kroc set his own goal: to open a thousand McDonald’s from coast to coast.
However, there were problems. Kroc continually clashed with the McDonald brothers over changes he wanted to make to his original formula. This caused Kroc to become frustrated and he decided to have control of McDonald’s. In 1961, he bought McDonald’s. for $2.7 million dollars. Kroc thought the deal included the original restaurant in San Bernardino, but it didn’t. Angry, Kroc decided to take revenge: since he had the rights to the name, the brothers were forced to rename their place as Big M. Kroc opened a new McDonald’s just down the block.
Pulling out the creators of McDonald’s
With the McDonald brothers out of his way, Kroc was free to run the company however he wanted. By 1965, he had opened more than 700 restaurants in 44 US states. In April of that year, McDonald’s became the first fast food company in To quote in the bag, with a price of $22 per share. Within weeks it rose to $49 a share, making Kroc a fast multi-millionaire. By the end of the decade, Kroc had met and exceeded his goal, opening more than 1,500 McDonald’s around the world.
In the 1970s, McDonald’s was the largest provider of food in the country and remained in that position for the next 20 years. At his death, in January 1984, a new McDonald’s opened on average every 17 hours. Ten months later, he sold his 50 billionth burger.
Like many of the most influential entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ray Kroc was not a creator. When Kroc entered the industry, fast food already existed in many forms, from diners to hot dog stands. But it was Kroc who had the ability to enhance the concept of fast food and to deliver it in the best way.
The man behind the Golden Arches
Ray Kroc believed that the success of his company was found in the fact that franchisees followed the method the verbatim. To secure it, produced a manual 75-page document that specified every aspect of running and operating a McDonald’s. Nothing was open to interpretation. For example, the hamburgers had to weigh exactly 1.6 ounces, contain a quarter of an ounce of onion, a tablespoon of mustard and a tablespoon of ketchup. The fries needed to be cut just right. The manual even specified how often the premises should be cleaned.
In 1961, Kroc came up with a way to gain more control over his franchisees. He opened a training center in Illinois, which would become the “Hamburger University”.