April 15, 1955, 70 years ago: Ray Kroc opens the 1st franchised McDonald's restaurant, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois. Food on planet Earth will never be the same.
Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, New Hampshire natives whose family had lived in California since the 1920s, opened a hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California in 1940. In 1948, they created the Speedee Service System to produce their meals, a method that became the standard for fast food.
They focused on a reduced menu, consisting of 9 items: Their 15-cent hamburger, a 20-cent cheeseburger, soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and a slice of pie. They were successful enough to begin franchising their system in 1953, with a restaurant in Phoenix.
In 1954, the brothers bought 8 Multi-Mixer machines for mixing milkshakes from Prince Castle. That caught the attention of the Prince Castle salesman who took the order, Ray Kroc. Kroc went to San Bernardino in 1954, and met the brothers. They hired him as their franchise agent. On April 15, 1955, Kroc opened his 1st McDonald's, in Des Plaines.
Kroc became frustrated with the McDonald brothers' desire to maintain a small number of restaurants. The brothers also consistently told Kroc he could not make changes to things such as the original blueprint. Finally, in 1961, Kroc bought the brothers out, for $2.7 million, calculated so as to ensure each brother received $1 million after taxes. (In 2022 money, that $2.7 million becomes $29.5 million.)
Maurice McDonald died in 1971, at the age of 69. Richard McDonald died in 1998, at 89. They got their million after taxes, and that was about it. Kroc became one of the richest men in the world, dying in 1984, with McDonald's having over 50 billion hamburgers served.
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