Authors: Ray Kroc
Grinding It Out (27 page)
La Jolla, California
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From the time he completed this book in 1977 until he died of heart failure on January 14, 1984, at age 82, Ray Kroc never stopped working for McDonald's. Even in his last few years when he was confined to a wheelchair, he still went to the office in San Diego nearly every day.
As senior chairman, he scrutinized a first-day sales report from every new restaurant the day it opened, and he watched with approval the moves made by Fred Turner and other executives he'd left to run the day-to-day operations of McDonald's. The results were astonishing even by Ray Kroc's standards.
During 1983, McDonald's grew to nearly double the 4,000 restaurants it had when this book was first published. Its 1983 sales, systemwide, approached $9 billion. And in December of that year
Esquire
magazine saluted Ray Kroc as one of fifty individuals who had made the greatest contribution to the American way of life in the twentieth century. He was ranked with psychologist Abraham Maslow, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in the category of “visionaries.”
Kroc gleefully accepted the tribute as good public relations for McDonald's and posed for a photograph that showed him leaning over his desk holding a branding iron in the shape of the Golden Arches. Author Tom Robbins addressed the social impact of McDonald's in his
Esquire
piece, writing: “Columbus discovered America, Jefferson invented it, and Ray Kroc Big Mac'd it. It could have been an omniscient computer that provided this land with its prevailing ambience, it might have been an irresistible new weapons system, a political revolution, an art movement, or some gene-altering drug. How wonderful that it was a hamburger!”
But Kroc's real contribution was not in standardizing American tasteâit was in creating the McDonald's franchising system. His greatest skill was as an instinctive leader who brought entrepreneurs into a structure that both forced them to conform to high standards of quality and service and freed them to operate as independent business people. These franchisees, teamed with corporate managers and the various suppliers of food and equipment, form a system that by 1987 represented more than 2,000 independent companies. The McDonald's System developed a business momentum that accelerated steadily during its founder's lifetime and continued gaining velocity after his passing.
“Every day the sun rises on another McDonald's,” runs a line from the company's 1985 annual report. A total of 597 new restaurants were added during that year, and many of them were in unusual locations, such as St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, where McDonald's replaced the coffee shop. Other unexpected places where the Golden Arches were popping up included tollway services plazas, military bases, shopping malls, and amusement parks. This bore out Kroc's contention that McDonald's was far from reaching the point of market saturation when there would be no new areas in which to open. “When all our areas are covered,” he would say, “we'll start filling in the nooks and crannies.”
The 1985 annual report made exploration of opportunity for new McDonald's locations its principal theme, stating: “The company currently is investigating the possibility of operating restaurants in several national and state parks. And we will continue to dream, to pursue opportunity wherever it leads us. MaybeâsomedayâMcDonald's will be found on aircraft carriers and commercial airliners. In sports stadiums and fine department stores. The sky's the limit. And even that may not be true. Those folks doing a tour of duty on a space station a decade or two from now may want a taste of home. And, who knows, it might just be the familiar taste of a Big Mac.”
With average sales for restaurants open at least one year running $1.3 million and systemwide sales of more than $12 billion a year, McDonald's now serves 19 million people daily in its more than 9,400 restaurants around the world; that is about 13,000 customers a minute!
The McDonald's franchise continues to be one of the most sought after business opportunities in the world. About 20,000 inquiries from individuals interested in becoming McDonald's franchisees are received annually at corporate headquarters.
Training and development of employees remains a major emphasis for McDonald's. Some 2,500 students attend the restaurant operations and management classes at McDonald's Hamburger University each year. This is all the more significant in view of the fact that, as John Love, author of
Behind the Golden Arches
, points out: “With more than 500,000 people on its payroll at any one time, McDonald's is easily one of the largest employers in the United States.” But, Love adds, “Its impact on the U.S. work force greatly exceeds its current employment, because it trains so many high school students for their first jobs.”
Another area of continuing interest for the company is community involvement through programs such as Ronald McDonald House, Ronald McDonald Children's Charities, support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and a campaign to prevent drug use among the nation's youth.
The impetus for all these programs and for McDonald's supremacy in franchising can be traced directly to Ray Kroc. As Fred Turner said in his eulogy at a memorial service for the McDonald's founder on January 20, 1984: “Ray touched us. He had a rare capacity to bring out the best in us.
“Ray taught us. He taught us to be diligent, to apply ourselves, to raise our self-expectations, to be enthusiastic about our endeavors, to have pride and to waste not.
“Ray gave us an example. He gave us an example to be generous, to be thoughtful to others, to be fair-minded, to have balance, to do nothing in excess. We admire his entrepreneurship, his competitiveness, his integrity. We loved his personality, his openness and inherent honesty, and his spontaneity. We loved his sense of humor.
“He was positive, not negative. He was a giver, not a taker. He was the best boss in the world, a best friend, a second father, a perfect partner, and an inspiration. We offer each other our condolences for the friend, for the partner, for the leader we have lost.
“We shall miss him. He has given us much as human beings, which we share or will share with our families, with our friends, and with our associatesâwhomever we touch.”
âRobert Anderson
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Chapter 10
1
.â Ten are still with us as McDonald's licensees: Mel Foerster, Louis Groen, Don Hazeltine, Ralph Lanphar, Jack Lubeznik, Dick Picchietti, Frank Patton, Chuck Posey, Dick Shepard, and Reub Taylor. Others in the class were: Barney Agate, Tony Fellier, Ted Hoffman, Bob Kinsley, Earl McGill, Bill Stachols, John Syyperski, and Al Wooliford.2
.â A New York judge who mysteriously disappeared in 1930.
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THE STORY OF McDONALD'SâTOLD BY THE MAN WHO STARTED IT ALL
“In explicit, juicy detail he tells us how he did it.”
â
The Tennessean
(Nashville)
“For anyone who wants a lot of personal detail and lots of great business stories,
Grinding It Out
is good reading.”
â
The Houston Post
“Tells his story in a rapid-fire style that leaves the impression the true Kroc is coming through.”
â
The San Diego Union-Tribune
“There are surprises on every page of this candid, witty, rags-to-riches story.”
â
The Boston Globe
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Ray Kroc
(1902-1954) was a businessman, generally credited with building the McDonald's restaurant chain into one of the successful corporations in the world. He was the author of
Grinding It Out
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Contents
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McDonald's, BigMac, Filet-O-Fish, Quarter Pounder, Egg McMuffin, Ronald McDonald, McDonald's All-American Band, and the golden arches symbol are trademarks owned by McDonald's Corporation.
GRINDING IT OUT.
Copyright © 1977 by Ray A. Kroc. Afterword copyright © 1987 by Robert Anderson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Reprinted by arrangement with McGraw-Hill Education.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Kroc, Ray, 1902â1984.
    Grinding it out: the making of McDonald's / Ray Kroc, with Robert Anderson.
            p. cm.
    ISBN 978-0-8092-8259-3 (hardcover)
    1. Kroc, Ray, 1902â1984. 2. McDonald's Corporation. 3. RestaurateursâUnited StatesâBiography.
    TX910.5.K76 A34 1977
    647'.9573
    [B]
76056878
ISBN 978-1-250-12750-1 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-12751-8 (e-book)
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Originally published in the United States by Contemporary Books
Previously published by St. Martin's Paperbacks
First St. Martin's Griffin Edition: August 2016
eISBN: 9781250127518
