Fast Food
Fast food chains revolutionized the restaurant industry in the 1950s.
The first McDonald's restaurant was a barbecue joint that opened in 1940 by brothers Dick and Maurice McDonald along Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. At first, they offered 25 different items served by carhops. They catered to young, wealthy people who were part of the emerging California road culture. Teens drove up, placed their order with the carhops and were served on trays that hooked onto rolled down windows.
In 1940, The brothers figured out that almost all of their profits were coming the sale of hamburgers. They also sensed that teens and families alike were interested in eating quickly. So, they closed down their restaurant for several months and developed their "Speedee Service System" of food preparation. This was a streamlined assembly line for food. They also streamlined their menu to hamburgers, milkshakes and french fries. The burgers sold for 15-cents, about half of what a burger cost at regular diners of the time. With success, the brothers franchised their enterprise and had eight restaurants open by the early 50s.
It's significant that McDonald's concentrated on milkshakes because that brought Ray Kroc to McDonalds in 1954. Kroc was selling the Multimixer – a machine that could mix five shakes at a time – when he became fascinated with the Speedee system. He asks the brothers to allow him to franchise McDonald's outside of California. They do and Kroc opened his first outlet in Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
By 1958, the company sold its 100 millionth hamburger. By 1961, Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers and opened a training facility called Hamburger University in Illinois. The rest, as they say, is history.
In a way, Burger King was an outgrowth of McDonald's. The same year that Ray Kroc visited the original McDonald's, James McLamore and David Edgerton visited as well. They were both graduates of the Cornell University course in hotel administration, and they also saw the potential of assembly-line fast food. They opened their first restaurant in 1954 in a suburb of Miami, Florida. Now, Burger King has more than 11,220 franchise outlets in 61 countries.
The franchise model was quickly adapted to other types of food, for example, pizza. By the early 50s, servicemen returning from Italy brought back a taste for pizza. Up until then, pizza was a regional dish concentrated in Italian immigrant neighborhoods in New York and Chicago. New York pizza was very thin, and Chicago pizza tended to be very thick. After World War Two, other local pizza joints began to open up with a variety of recipes.
In 1958, Dan and Frank Carney borrowed $600 from their mother and opened the first Pizza Hut in Wichita Kansas. It was so successful that they began franchising restaurants quickly. Now they have operations in over 100 countries.
The first McDonald's restaurant was a barbecue joint that opened in 1940 by brothers Dick and Maurice McDonald along Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. At first, they offered 25 different items served by carhops. They catered to young, wealthy people who were part of the emerging California road culture. Teens drove up, placed their order with the carhops and were served on trays that hooked onto rolled down windows.
In 1940, The brothers figured out that almost all of their profits were coming the sale of hamburgers. They also sensed that teens and families alike were interested in eating quickly. So, they closed down their restaurant for several months and developed their "Speedee Service System" of food preparation. This was a streamlined assembly line for food. They also streamlined their menu to hamburgers, milkshakes and french fries. The burgers sold for 15-cents, about half of what a burger cost at regular diners of the time. With success, the brothers franchised their enterprise and had eight restaurants open by the early 50s.
It's significant that McDonald's concentrated on milkshakes because that brought Ray Kroc to McDonalds in 1954. Kroc was selling the Multimixer – a machine that could mix five shakes at a time – when he became fascinated with the Speedee system. He asks the brothers to allow him to franchise McDonald's outside of California. They do and Kroc opened his first outlet in Des Plaines, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
By 1958, the company sold its 100 millionth hamburger. By 1961, Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers and opened a training facility called Hamburger University in Illinois. The rest, as they say, is history.
In a way, Burger King was an outgrowth of McDonald's. The same year that Ray Kroc visited the original McDonald's, James McLamore and David Edgerton visited as well. They were both graduates of the Cornell University course in hotel administration, and they also saw the potential of assembly-line fast food. They opened their first restaurant in 1954 in a suburb of Miami, Florida. Now, Burger King has more than 11,220 franchise outlets in 61 countries.
The franchise model was quickly adapted to other types of food, for example, pizza. By the early 50s, servicemen returning from Italy brought back a taste for pizza. Up until then, pizza was a regional dish concentrated in Italian immigrant neighborhoods in New York and Chicago. New York pizza was very thin, and Chicago pizza tended to be very thick. After World War Two, other local pizza joints began to open up with a variety of recipes.
In 1958, Dan and Frank Carney borrowed $600 from their mother and opened the first Pizza Hut in Wichita Kansas. It was so successful that they began franchising restaurants quickly. Now they have operations in over 100 countries.