by Andre Sanchez

The more you sweat, the luckier you get: so said Ray Kroc, the pioneer of fast-food mass production and founder of the McDonald’s empire. His is the quintessential rags-to-riches story, being forced to give up his job playing jazz piano because his earnings were insufficient to provide for himself and his wife Ethel. 

His first job was in a soda fountain with his uncle before he started high school, and after dropping out of school the next year Ray started selling musical instruments and sheet music with two friends.  This business failed, however, and during World War One, in his early teens, he drove an ambulance for the Red Cross after lying about his age. After marrying in 1922 he held a number of sales jobs, the first being as a salesman for the Lily Tulip Cup Company that he held for 17 years.

After a time playing piano on a radio station, and trying his hand at real estate, he found himself selling multimixers that could make five milk shakes at once.  He got the exclusive rights to this from the inventor, Earl Prince, which is how he met Richard and Maurice McDonald, two of his best customers.  He decided to travel to California to their premises to found out why they bought so many of his mixers – a total of eight!

He found that they owned a chain of restaurants and had adopted an assembly line process for the production of their sandwiches and burgers. It was obvious that the brothers were not interested in further developing the business. He offered them a business plan with him as exclusive agent, and in 1954 opened a McDonald’s drive-in at Des Plaines, Illinois. This was the start of an empire that was to change a whole world’s eating habits.

His philosophy was to deliver food very fast, but of the highest quality. The mixture of milk shakes was perfected, the beef used in the hamburgers was local and the fries were cooked on-site rather than bought in.  This was a difficult time for Ray Kroc.  He was diabetic and suffered from arthritis, and had previously had his thyroid gland and gall bladder removed, but his energy was inexhaustible.

He was 59 years old when he paid the McDonald brothers $2.7 million for their business and formed the Franchise Realty Company to lease land to his franchisees. He recognized that the leasing of land would become a major part of the business, being as it is, essential to any franchising operation.

He made advertising a philosophy that he lived by, and his creation of Ronald McDonald was a stroke of genius that would help the name of his chain spread throughout the world. The extent of his attention to detail in merchanting his products is exemplified in the way that he changed the name of his Japanese outlet to Mukadonaldo to make it easier for the Japanese to pronounce, and that the Indian and Middle East outlets do not serve pork.

Every franchisee in his organization had to conform to the McDonald way.  Every Big Mac had to be the same, and employees were sent to Hamburger University in Illinois to learn his way of doing things.  He opened his ten thousandth store in 1987 and operated in 65 countries.

In 1968 Ray turned the regular operation of the business over to Fred Turner, an employee who had risen through the ranks.  Ray Kroc had met him in 1956, and it was Fred who created Hamburger University and was behind efforts to standardize operations at all McDonald’s outlets. He also created the Big Mac and Chicken McNuggets and was behind the expansion of the company outside the USA in the 1970s.

Ray himself decided to take an overall view of the company and its global expansion and organization.  He loved traveling to franchises unannounced to carry out spot checks and so keep his franchisees on their toes. He realized the importance of keeping the customer happy at all times, but also of detecting any non-conformance in his methods and product quality.

In 1974 there was an emergency of unparalleled proportions:  the San Diego Padres baseball team was intent on moving to Washington DC, so Ray Kroc bought them over and prevented the move.  He became an overnight hero. He passed away in 1984 at the eight of 81, a man who had realized a dream and had revolutionized and changed forever the way that fast food would be merchanted the world over.

His methods are used in virtually every fast food chain, and he made obvious the benefits of product branding. Everybody knows the McDonald’s arch, and his product branding, making best use of every part of the McDonald’s name, has never been equaled. Ray Kroc will be forever remembered as the man who changed the world’s eating habits and it is unlikely that there will ever be a marketing genius like him. 

Ray Kroc – Drop-out and McDonald’s Pioneer  was originally published at http://www.businessmannow.com