On 14th January 1872 Henry Ford introduced the concept of the assembly line. He revolutionised modern transportation but also helped introduce the fast food restaurant. In 1955, a businessman called Ray Kroc unleashed a restaurant revolution and the beginning of the western world obesity problem when he opened the ninth McDonalds franchise restaurant, in Des Plaines, Illinois, which eventually led to the McDonalds Corporation and world domination by the hamburger giant.
Kroc was a milkshake machine salesman and his work brought him into contact with the two brothers, Maurice and Richard McDonald, at their innovative hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino in California. The brothers were interesting characters who were inspired by the assembly line manufacturing method of Henry Ford and in 1948 they closed their successful but traditional restaurant for several months and applied the principles of mass production to the restaurant industry.
They pared the service back to the bare essentials, offering a simple menu of hamburgers, french fries and milkshakes, which were produced on a continuous basis, rather than made to order, and with no alternatives offered. Food could therefore be served to a formula, nearly instantaneously and always consistently, a new idea that they called “fast food”. There were no waitresses and customers walked to a single window to place and receive their orders. They made the food preparation area visible to the customers, to exhibit its standards of cleanliness, and they eliminated all plates and cutlery, serving only in paper bags.
The two brothers were not particularly ambitious however and only wanted to have their one restaurant but Ray Kroc wanted to have even more new McDonalds and he pressed then to expand the operation. Eventually he lost patience with them and forced the brothers out of business by opening a rival diner that he called McDOnalds (similar but not the same) right on the other side of the street. The small restaurant of the two brothers lost their customers and Ray Kroc bought them out in 1961 for $2.7 million, which was a tidy sum in 1961. McDonalds didn’t reach the United Kingdom until 1974 and now there are over a thousand of them. I don’t remember when I first started using McDonalds, probably at about the time the children started to request it as a dining option, and now I would only use it if I am absolutely desperate!
McDonald’s restaurants are now operating in 119 countries and territories around the world and serve 58 million customers each day. It operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, employing more than 1.5 million people.
Kroc was a milkshake machine salesman and his work brought him into contact with the two brothers, Maurice and Richard McDonald, at their innovative hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino in California. The brothers were interesting characters who were inspired by the assembly line manufacturing method of Henry Ford and in 1948 they closed their successful but traditional restaurant for several months and applied the principles of mass production to the restaurant industry.
They pared the service back to the bare essentials, offering a simple menu of hamburgers, french fries and milkshakes, which were produced on a continuous basis, rather than made to order, and with no alternatives offered. Food could therefore be served to a formula, nearly instantaneously and always consistently, a new idea that they called “fast food”. There were no waitresses and customers walked to a single window to place and receive their orders. They made the food preparation area visible to the customers, to exhibit its standards of cleanliness, and they eliminated all plates and cutlery, serving only in paper bags.
The two brothers were not particularly ambitious however and only wanted to have their one restaurant but Ray Kroc wanted to have even more new McDonalds and he pressed then to expand the operation. Eventually he lost patience with them and forced the brothers out of business by opening a rival diner that he called McDOnalds (similar but not the same) right on the other side of the street. The small restaurant of the two brothers lost their customers and Ray Kroc bought them out in 1961 for $2.7 million, which was a tidy sum in 1961. McDonalds didn’t reach the United Kingdom until 1974 and now there are over a thousand of them. I don’t remember when I first started using McDonalds, probably at about the time the children started to request it as a dining option, and now I would only use it if I am absolutely desperate!
McDonald’s restaurants are now operating in 119 countries and territories around the world and serve 58 million customers each day. It operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, employing more than 1.5 million people.
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