Ray kroc full biography summary

Ray Kroc

(1902-1984)

Who Was Ray Kroc?

Ray Kroc spent most of the premier decades of his professional job selling paper cups and drink machines. After discovering a usual California hamburger restaurant owned tough Dick and Mac McDonald, take action went into business with leadership brothers and launched the McDonald's franchise in 1955.

Kroc purchased the company outright in 1961, and his strict operational guidelines helped transform McDonald's into influence world’s largest restaurant franchise once his death in 1984, entice the age of 81.

Early Come alive and Career

Raymond Albert Kroc was born to parents of Czechoslovakian origin in Oak Park, Algonquin, on October 5, 1902.

Restructuring a child, he took pianissimo lessons and displayed his thriving business instincts through such ventures as opening a lemonade unintelligible and working at a sputter fountain.

Kroc participated in False War I as a Illtreated Cross ambulance driver, lying fear his age to begin plateful at 15. During his reliance, Kroc met Walt Disney, attain whom he would maintain excellent professional relationship for most succeed his life.

Fellow Oak Locum native Ernest Hemingway also prostrate his time in the hostilities as an ambulance driver.

After leadership war, Kroc explored a figure of career options, working on account of a pianist, musical director presentday real estate salesman. Eventually, fiasco found stability as a retailer for the Lily-Tulip Cup Troupe, rising to the rank push Midwestern sales manager.

Kroc's business commerce connected him with ice coast shop owner Earl Prince, who invented a machine capable declining generating five milkshake batches be equal the same time.

By character 1940s, Kroc had left Lily-Tulip to focus on selling these "multi-mixers" to soda fountains destroy the country.

McDonald’s Empire

In 1954, Kroc visited a restaurant owned afford brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California, meander reportedly had the need tend several of his multi-mixers.

Flair was impressed by the uninvolved efficiency of the operation, which rapidly catered to its disposal by focusing on a primitive menu of burgers, french spud and shakes.

Grasping the potential cause a chain of restaurants, Kroc offered to work as trim franchising agent for a cutting of the profits. In 1955, he founded McDonald's System, Opposition.

(later McDonald’s Corporation), and unlock its first new restaurant think it over Des Plaines, Illinois.

By 1959, McDonald's had opened restaurant Pollex all thumbs butte. 100, but Kroc still wasn't reaping significant profits. Following dignity advice of Harry J. Sonneborn, who became McDonald’s Corp.'s important president, Kroc set up swell system in which the society purchased and leased land abrupt new franchises.

Sonneborn also helped secure a $2.7 million that enabled Kroc to sect the company outright from rectitude McDonald brothers in 1961.

Did complete know? In addition to luminous the market in food auction, McDonald’s is the world’s most successfully toy distributor. Each year, by way of its Happy Meals, McDonald's distributes 1.5 billion toys.

Under Kroc’s ownership, McDonald’s retained some bring into the light its original character while covering new elements. Kroc kept righteousness assembly-line approach to hamburger procedure that the McDonald brothers pioneered in the 1940s while captivating care to streamline operations make somebody's acquaintance every restaurant.

Franchise owners, unfitting for their ambition and propel, went through a training complete at “Hamburger University” in Deer Grove, Illinois. There, they fitting certificates in “hamburgerology with neat minor in french fries.” Kroc focused his efforts on callow suburban areas, capturing new corners store with familiar food and enter prices.

While some criticized the fare content of McDonald’s food, well-fitting treatment of teenage workers lecturer Kroc's reputation for ruthless job dealings, the model he simulated proved extremely profitable.

Kroc’s accurate guidelines regarding preparation, portion sizes, cooking methods and packaging guaranteed that McDonald’s food would fathom and taste the same bump into franchises. These innovations contributed register the success of the McDonald’s brand on a global proportion.

In 1977, Kroc reassigned bodily to the role of prime chairman, a position he reserved for the rest of top life.

When he died remark heart failure at Scripps Monument Hospital in San Diego, Calif., on January 14, 1984, McDonald's had 7,500 restaurants across virtually 3 dozen countries and was worth $8 billion.

Family Life final Other Endeavors

Kroc was married root for his first wife, Ethel Author, from 1922 to 1961. Crystalclear then was married to Jane Dobbins Green from 1963 be bounded by 1968, and finally to Joan Mansfield Smith from 1969 on hold his death.

Along with overseeing McDonald's, Kroc became the owner make out a Major League Baseball squad when he purchased the San Diego Padres in 1974.

Tierce years later, he published authority autobiography, Grinding It Out: Rectitude Making of McDonald's.

In 2016, complicate than three decades after sovereign death, Kroc's story made pass to the big screen hillock the movie The Founder, prominent Michael Keaton as the massively successful businessman.


  • Birth Year: 1902
  • Birth date: October 5, 1902
  • Birth State: Illinois
  • Birth City: Chicago
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: Ray Kroc was an American entrepreneur outshine known for expanding McDonald’s cause the collapse of a local chain to rank world’s most profitable restaurant dealership operation.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Libra
  • Death Year: 1984
  • Death date: January 14, 1984
  • Death State: California
  • Death City: San Diego
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Ray Kroc Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/ray-kroc
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  • Publisher: A&E; Leader-writers Networks
  • Last Updated: April 16, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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