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This cache is a tribute to America's #1 comfort food, The Big Mac, Sometimes you just gotta have one..... or two, if your pregnant. LOL.
Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun
The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. In 1954, Ray Kroc, a seller of Multimixer milkshake machines, learned that brothers Richard and Maurice (Dick and Mac) McDonald were using eight of his high-tech Multimixers in their San Bernardino, California, restaurant. His curiosity was piqued, and he went to San Bernardino to take a look at the McDonalds' restaurant.
The McDonald Brothers had been in the restaurant business since 1937. In 1948, they closed down a successful carhop drive-in to establish the streamlined operation Ray Kroc saw in 1954. The menu was simple: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, shakes, soft drinks, and apple pie. The carhops were eliminated to make McDonald's a self-serve operation, and there were no tables to sit at, no jukebox, and no telephone. As a result, McDonald's attracted families rather than teenagers. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the restaurant was the efficiency with which the McDonald's workers did their jobs. Mac and Dick McDonald had taken great care in setting up their kitchen. Each worker's steps had been carefully choreographed, like an assembly line, to ensure maximum efficiency. The savings in preparation time, and the resulting increase in volume, allowed the McDonalds to lower the price of a hamburger from 30 cents to 15 cents.
Believing that the McDonald formula was a ticket to success, Kroc suggested that they franchise their restaurants throughout the country. When they hesitated to take on this additional burden, Kroc volunteered to do it for them. He returned to his home outside of Chicago with rights to set up McDonald's restaurants throughout the country, except in a handful of territories in California and Arizona already licensed by the McDonald brothers.
Kroc's first McDonald's restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, near Chicago, on April 15, 1955, the same day that Kroc incorporated his company as McDonald's Corporation. As with any new venture, Kroc encountered a number of hurdles. The first was adapting the McDonald's building design to a northern climate. A basement had to be installed to house a furnace, and adequate ventilation was difficult, as exhaust fans sucked out warm air in the winter, and cool air in the summer.
Most frustrating of all, however, was Kroc's initial failure to reproduce the McDonalds' delicious french fries. When Kroc and his crew duplicated the brothers' method, leaving just a little peel for flavor, cutting the potatoes into shoestrings, and rinsing the strips in cold water, the fries turned into mush. After repeated telephone conversations with the McDonald brothers and several consultations with the Potato and Onion Association, Kroc pinpointed the cause of the soggy spuds. The McDonald brothers stored their potatoes outside in wire bins, and the warm California breeze dried them out and cured them, slowly turning the sugars into starch. In order to reproduce the superior taste of these potatoes, Kroc devised a system using an electric fan to dry the potatoes in a similar way. He also experimented with a blanching process. Within three months he had a french fry that was, in his opinion, slightly superior in taste to the McDonald brothers' fries.
Once the Des Plaines restaurant was operational, Kroc sought franchisees for his McDonald's chain. The first snag came quickly. In 1956 he discovered that the McDonald brothers had licensed the franchise rights for Cook County, Illinois (home of Chicago and many of its suburbs) to the Frejlack Ice Cream Company. Kroc was incensed that the McDonalds had not informed him of this arrangement. He purchased the rights back for $25,000, five times what the Frejlacks had originally paid and pressed forward.
Kroc decided early on that it was best to first establish the restaurants and then to franchise them out, so that he could control the uniformity of the stores. Early McDonald's restaurants were situated in the suburbs. Corner lots were usually in greater demand because gas stations and shops competed for them, but Kroc preferred lots in the middle of blocks to accommodate his U-shaped parking lots. Since these lots were cheaper, Kroc could give franchisees a price break.
McDonald's grew slowly for its first three years. By 1958, there were 34 restaurants. In 1959, however, Kroc opened 67 new restaurants, bringing the total to 101 locations.
Kroc had decided at the outset that McDonald's would not be a supplier to its franchisees, his background in sales warned him that such an arrangement could lead to lower quality for the sake of higher profits. He also had determined that the company should at no time own more than 30 percent of all McDonald's restaurants. He knew, however, that his success depended upon his franchisees' success, and he was determined to help them in any way that he could.
CONGRATULATIONS TO DEDICATEDVOLFAN FOR THE FTF.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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