I Dream of Golden Arches

The McDonald’s Empire

Whether I was pulling up with my mother on report card day after she had bribed me to get A’s and B’s, or I was loitering in parked cars with other high schoolers who had nothing else to do, I spent a good chunk of my youth in a McDonald’s parking lot. Who could blame us? The food is cheap and delicious, and their franchises surround the average American. For how regional this country is with its unique dialects, histories, and peoples, it is McDonald’s that is a constant across all fifty states. Those Golden Arches are as “uniquely American” as our flag.

An empire exists within our land. Its banners are red and yellow, its devotees are loyal and numerous, and its glory is unmatched. To get ahead of accusations of hyperbole, consider this: McDonald’s has 13,515 active restaurants in the United States, roughly one for every 24,000 people. McDonald’s USA president Joe Erlinger has data to suggest that over 85 percent of the U.S. population has visited a location at least once a year. The company’s ads, jingles, and cavalcade of cartoon characters imbue us with a sense of nostalgia and Americana that are unmatched by any other major chain.

Popular history would have us believe that the fast food empire was founded on April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, with the McDonald’s #1 Store. As many reading this might guess, “popular history” is as much a product as the Big Mac.

A Foundation of Innovation

“McDonald’s Famous Barbecue” was opened on May 15, 1940, in San Bernardino, California, by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, two New Hampshire transplants who had previously worked as handymen on film sets. It was a drive-in operation, where orders were taken from a customer’s automobile window and brought out to be enjoyed in the car. The restaurant was a great success and popular among crowds of rowdy teenagers, motorists, and middle-class families wanting a cheap meal. Though making a comfortable living, the 1940s spirit of efficiency and mass production was not only limited to automobiles and bomber planes, as consumer goods were produced more cheaply and rapidly than ever. The brothers closed their local staple in 1948, not to open a new restaurant, but a new type of restaurant.

They began by cutting down a menu of twenty-five items to just six: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, potato chips, coffee, soft drinks, and apple pie. All barbecue options were dropped to make hamburgers their staple, since they were the most popular item and also the cheapest and easiest to cook. Taking inspiration from Ford’s Model T assembly line, the brothers modeled a kitchen floor plan with chalk outlines at a local tennis court to make a streamlined system of cooking, garnishing, and wrapping hamburgers that would be hot and ready upon customer order. Just as every factory employee in Detroit had one job in order to crank out Fords, each McDonald’s employee in San Bernardino specialized in one part of the making of a hamburger.

In 1954, the brothers put in an order for eight Prince Castle Multimixer milkshake machines, an almost unheard-of amount of machinery for one restaurant location. That’s when they drew the attention of the man who sold them the units, Ray Kroc.

Cheap Beef and Prime Real Estate

The 2016 film The Founder would lead many to believe that Ray Kroc was the ambitious visionary who saw the potential in McDonald’s franchises nationwide that the McDonalds themselves could not see. Ray Kroc would encourage the McDonalds to bring their restaurant nationwide, though, not because he somehow saw growth that they couldn’t imagine, but because he wanted to be able to sell them more Multimixers. The brothers already had franchises across the Southwest and California, having opened their first in 1953 in Phoenix, Arizona (which was also the first location to feature the iconic Golden Arches). Kroc wanted to bring operations to the Chicagoland area, where he could offer franchise rights to investors and friends at his country club. After continued correspondence and negotiations, the McDonald brothers agreed to a contract with Ray Kroc to open up more stores in the Midwest under the stipulation that Kroc could make no changes to the menu, store layout, or food production process without written permission from the brothers. The terms had 1.9 percent of the gross profit going to Kroc and 0.5 percent going to the brothers.

Kroc was making enough to break even, but not enough to get rich. Vice president of the ice cream parlor chain Tastee-Freez, Harry Sonneborn, used to buy Multimixers from Kroc. It was Sonneborn who altered the course of the McDonald’s franchise model by suggesting to Kroc that convincing investors to open up their own McDonald’s franchise wasn’t the way to drive growth, but owning the land where a McDonald’s would be built was. Kroc and Sonneborn’s new Franchise Realty Corporation convinced property owners to lease or sell the land to McDonald’s, and the franchisee that oversaw the restaurant would pay monthly fees to cover the mortgage as well as a percentage on all profits. Franchise Realty charged more than what it needed to cover costs, but the franchisee was left with a popular restaurant and consistent stream of income. Kroc would then put his 1.4 percent gross profit back into the system to keep acquiring more land for restaurants to be built. When Kroc was given the go-ahead in 1955, seven McDonald’s locations existed. In five years, he and Sonneborn owned the land occupied by 228 stores. If you got a handshake from Kroc after a successful meeting, you’d see that his business card listed him as “Founder.”

Takeover and Takeoff

This is usually the part of the story where the evil businessman swindles the well-meaning McDonald brothers out of their legacy, fortune, and namesake. That’s how The Founder portrayed it, and that’s how most popular history functions. The end of this saga is actually a bit more conventional than one might imagine. In 1961, Kroc and the McDonald brothers came to loggerheads about where the future of McDonald’s would go. Maurice and Richard had been retired for two years but still were majority shareholders and maintained decision power over changes to stores and menus. So, Kroc had Harry Sonneborn raise up enough cash and simply bought them out. Kroc did make a handshake deal to pay the brothers 1 percent annually for royalties, but he never did honor it. The brothers, however, never seemed to make a fuss, and their descendants by all appearances are just happy to see their family name everywhere they go.

Even in his own autobiography, Ray Kroc wanted to make it seem like he had forced the brothers out of business and took what he wanted, but Mr. Kroc was a Machiavellian only in his own mind. Richard McDonald was on record as saying that the two sides came to the final agreement mutually. Richard spoke positively about his former business partner, even years later and with years’ worth of unpaid royalties. Kroc died in 1984, but not before making McDonald’s the most popular and successful fast food company in the entire world. His commercials are timeless, some of his menu changes made decades ago are still enjoyed by customers today, and now 114 countries can enjoy a Double Quarter Pounder.

Emperor Ronald

The history of McDonald’s seems so quintessentially American that a propagandist would blush. It contains humble beginnings, great personal risks, a drive for innovation, and a vision for growth that was globe-conquering. You have the hardworking brothers who came up with an idea that everyone would copy, an ambitious salesman who knew exactly what the American public wanted, an empire that exports deliciousness the world over — and it's all headquartered in Chicago, USA. If you wanted a face for American expansion into an empire, choose Ronald McDonald. Consider that after the Berlin Wall fell, a McDonald’s appeared in Moscow two months later. Communism may be gone, but Ronald is here to stay.

It would be irresponsible for me, after telling the company’s story, not to mention the negative effects that McDonald’s has had on our country. Fast food went from being a treat to some people’s entire diets. In the 1990s, the company switched from cooking fries in beef tallow to cooking them in seed oils. Our population as a whole has never been more obese, and now more people in this country die from heart issues than hunger-related ones. These are all problems that McDonald’s definitely has had a hand in. However, I want the reader to consider the significance of what McDonald’s has accomplished — not merely in burgers sold or how many stores are built, but how a burger restaurant became instantly recognizable Americana. The company’s story is a testament to American ingenuity, innovation, and drive. For all of its faults and the faults of Ray Kroc, it is truly a story that could have only happened here.