In today’s post I’m going to tell you the very sad story of the Mc Donald brothers, the ones who had the idea of creating the most famous fast food chain, the Mc Donald’s restaurants.
If you ask anyone who is the founder of this fast food chain, they’ll probably answer Ray Kroc but the fact is that he took the idea from the Mc Donald brothers. Let’s start from Ray Kroc.
At
the age of 50, he used to sell blenders for milkshakes. What changed his life
was a phone call from the Mc Donald brothers: they orded and bought eight
blenders for their new Mc Donald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Kroc
was shocked by this unusual request but he immediately understood that there
was a business behind that.
So,
driven by curiosity, he decided to go there and see what was happening and what
he saw really made him dream big. He was so amazed that he even thought to quit
everything in order to dedicate his life to that new activity. What he saw once
entered the Mc Donald brothers’ restaurant was a real assembly line which
really impressed him.
To
be fair, he couldn’t even go inside easily due to the long queue he found
outside the restaurant. But he noticed it was a long but fast queue: the people
were served within three minutes and the food was really good. When Kroc ate
the burger, he was really astonished.
When he went inside to deliver the
blenders, he realized that the brothers had created an incredible working
system: in a very short time they prepared the burger and sold it at very
reasonable price.
The Mc Donald brothers told him
that they were trying to open new restaurants around America but they didn’t
gain success because of their weak ability at making business.
So why did the brothers fail? And
how did Ray Kroc turn a small restaurant into a huge global success?
The brothers got something big in
their hands but they weren’t able to manage it so Kroc decided he had to be in
that business no matter what. He asked the brothers to franchise, to collaborate
because he knew how to make that small restaurant something bigger. The
brothers first refused but Kroc made them realise what their business could
become if he was allowed to join them, so finally they accepted.
They worked together for six years
and during that time Kroc achieved great success but the brothers
couldn’t really understand what was happening.
Kroc was a fox: he didn’t want to
help the brothers, in his eyes Mc Donald’s was the biggest bargain of his life.
He offered the brothers 2.7 million
dollars to buy the company. The brothers, who had never had Kroc’s ability, let
him buy it. He bought the franchise rights and obligated the brothers to give
him their first restaurant in San Bernardino. They refused so Kroc, now the
only owner of the Mc Donald’s brand, changed the name of his restaurant in San
Bernardino from Mc Donald’s to The Big M and opened a fast food next to it and
made it fail.
Kroc hung pictures of himself in
each restaurant he opened, calling himself ‘the founder’ and deleting the Mc
Donald brothers’ memory. They’ve been forgotten by everyone, they’ve lost their
opportunity to become big due to the smart but very unethical behaviour of Mr Kroc.
MARIA, 3scB
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