Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want To Know About Fast Food

Giving their name to the world-famous franchise, Richard and Maurice (Mac) McDonald, were actually less influential in expanding the brand than their business partner, Ray Kroc. Nevertheless, these New Hampshire-born, Southern-California-residing brothers played an essential role in transitioning the fast food industry away from the original 1930s drive-in model, which required the employment of carhops and had such downsides as attracting rowdy teenagers who stole cutlery and broke glassware. Instead, they pioneered a system where people had to queue up for their food, which was made factory-style by low-paid workers who “needed to learn to do one thing, not many things” (14). While they were a big success in San Bernardino and earned substantial personal wealth, the McDonalds brothers would have not achieved national and then worldwide renown had they not met Kroc in 1954. While Kroc was out there putting McDonald's at busy US interchanges, the brothers remained in California, “reaping the rewards” (22). The result was that Kroc bought them out for one million dollars, and they were allowed to keep their one restaurant, but forced to change its name to “the Big M.” It soon went out of business, unable to compete with the McDonald's Kroc opened across the street.