40,000 Restaurants · 119 Countries · 69 Billion Served · 1 Milkshake Salesman
October 5, 1902 – January 14, 1984 · Oak Park, Illinois
He was fifty-two years old, selling milkshake machines out of the trunk of his car. Then he walked into a hamburger stand in San Bernardino and saw the future. He did not invent McDonald's. He took it from the men who did.
Five acts. A late bloomer who built the most recognized brand on earth — and the moral questions that came with it.
Thirty years of failure, selling everything from paper cups to piano lessons to milkshake machines.
Born in Oak Park, Illinois — the same town as Ernest Hemingway. Kroc lied about his age at fifteen to join the Red Cross ambulance corps in World War I (he trained alongside Walt Disney, though they did not know it). After the war, he sold paper cups for Lily-Tulip Cup Company for seventeen years. He played piano at night in speakeasies. He sold Florida real estate during the land boom and lost everything when it busted. In 1939, he became the exclusive distributor for the Multi-Mixer, a milkshake machine that could make five shakes at once. For fifteen years, he drove across America selling mixers to drive-ins. He was fifty-two, diabetic, and had lost his gallbladder and most of his thyroid. Then a restaurant in San Bernardino ordered eight Multi-Mixers.
He walked into a hamburger stand and saw an assembly line for food. He wanted to put one on every corner in America.
Dick and Mac McDonald had reinvented the restaurant. They eliminated car hops, cut the menu to nine items, and created the "Speedee Service System" — an assembly line for hamburgers. A burger in thirty seconds. Fries in a paper bag. No waitresses, no tipping, no wasted motion. Kroc was mesmerized. He convinced the brothers to let him franchise the concept nationally. On April 15, 1955, he opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois. But the relationship with the brothers was doomed from the start. They wanted quality. Kroc wanted scale.
He bought the McDonald brothers out for $2.7 million. Then he opened a McDonald's across the street from their restaurant and drove them out of business.
In 1961, Kroc bought the McDonald's name, system, and all franchise rights from Dick and Mac McDonald for $2.7 million. The brothers kept their original restaurant in San Bernardino. Kroc opened a new McDonald's across the street. The brothers' restaurant closed within a year. The handshake deal for 1% of all future revenues — which would have been worth billions — was never honored. Free of the brothers' restrictions, Kroc expanded ferociously. By 1965, there were 710 restaurants. McDonald's went public that year, and early investors made 300x their money.
He turned a hamburger stand into the most recognized brand on earth — more recognized than the cross.
By the 1970s, McDonald's was opening a new restaurant every day. The Big Mac launched in 1968. The Egg McMuffin in 1972 — inventing fast-food breakfast. Ronald McDonald became the second most recognized character in the world after Santa Claus. Kroc bought the San Diego Padres in 1974. He died on January 14, 1984, at age 81. His wife Joan inherited $500 million and spent the rest of her life giving it away — $1.5 billion to NPR, the Salvation Army, and alcohol treatment programs.
Partners, victims, rivals, and the people who built the golden arches.
He fed the world. The question is what he fed them — and who he stepped on to do it.
First-person accounts, historical research, fact-checks, and scene pitches from 198 contributors.
You have eaten there. Now help tell the story of how it was built.