Ray Kroc was an entrepreneur known for founding the McDonald's franchise and expanding it internationally. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on October 5, 1902. He worked as a salesman for 17 years after World War I, before becoming involved with McDonald's in the 1950s.
After World War II, Kroc found employment as a mixer salesman. When sales plummeted due to competition for other lower priced products, Kroc took notice of the McDonald brothers.
The McDonald brothers were customers who had bought multiple mixers. Seeing the potential to create a McDonald's franchise, Kroc volunteered to work as an agent to cut profits.
In 1955 he became president of the Corporation, opened the first franchised restaurant in Des Plaines, Chicago and in that same year he managed to sell 17 more franchises, however the profits were not high.
McDonalds Museum (Ray Kroc's first franchised restaurant in April 1955), similar to the style of the McDonalds brothers restaurants in Phoenix, Arizona and Downey, California), Des Plaines, Illinois, USA.
After meeting Harry Sonnenborne, a financial specialist, he changed his strategy to buy the territories where the premises would be located and charge a monthly rent for the use of the establishment.
He bought the company in 1961 for $ 2.7 million, implementing automation and preparation standards that helped make McDonald's the largest restaurant franchise in the world before his death in 1984 at the age of 81.
The fast food methodology was based on serving products online and quickly; hamburgers, fries, sodas and shakes.
In 1965 it managed to open 700 establishments in 44 states of the United States and in April of that same year it went public, becoming the first fast food company to do so. Before 1970 it had opened more than 1,500 McDonald's around the world.
Kroc's philosophy
Ray wanted to build a system that would be known for its quality of food, speed of service, and consistent preparation methods. I wanted to serve hamburgers, fries, and drinks that taste the same anywhere in the US.
To do this, he persuaded franchise owners and suppliers to share his vision and work not for McDonald's, but alongside McDonald's.
It emphasized following the principles of quality, service and cleanliness. He believed in entrepreneurship and used to reward franchises that displayed creativity, like the ones that invented the Big Mac or the McMuffin.
Other curiosities
Nicknamed the King of the Burger, he was included in Times magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World list in the Builders and Industry Titans category.
-He amassed a fortune of more than 500 million dollars throughout his life.
-One in eight Americans has worked at McDonald's. Therefore the Oxford dictionary, since 1986 has incorporated the term Mc-job to refer to a job that requires few skills and whose salary and prestige are very low.
-Since its opening in 1940, McDonald's has sold more than 100 billion hamburgers in the world. Today, the company estimates that 75 Big Macs are sold every second and a new branch opens every six hours.
-Walt Disney and Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds, served in the same ambulance platoon in WWI.
-Since 1940 they have sold around 100 billion hamburgers. They estimate that, worldwide, they sell 75 hamburgers per second.
The best phrases of Kroc
-The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards that he establishes for himself.
-You're only as good as the people you hire.
-If you only work for money, you will never get it, but if you love what you do and always put the client first, success will be yours.
-While you are green, you are growing. As soon as you are ripe, you start to rot.
-It is easy to have principles when you are rich. The most important thing is to have principles when you are poor.
-The two most important requirements for success are; first, be in the right place at the right time, and second, do something about it.
-None of us is as good as all of us.
-I have always believed that each man builds his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.
- Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more sweat, the luckier you will have.
-If you don't take risks, you should go out of business.
-Care for customers and the business will take care of itself.
-We take the burger business more seriously than anyone.
-We provide food that customers love, day after day. People just want more.
-While formal education is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success or its absence a fatal disadvantage.
-I was 52 years old. He had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gallbladder and most of my thyroid gland, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.
-Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company.
-Perfection is very difficult to achieve and perfection was what I wanted at McDonald's. Everything else was secondary to me.
-I believe in God, family and McDonald's. And in the office, the order is reversed.
-Happiness is not something tangible, it is a by-product, a by-product of achievement.
-I don't believe in saturation. We are thinking and speaking globally.
-I was never a great reader as a child. Books bored me. I liked action. But he spent a lot of time thinking about things. He thought of all kinds of situations and how he would handle them.
-There are things that money cannot buy and that hard work cannot earn. One of them is happiness.
-The more I help others to be successful, the more successful I am.