1902-1984
Fast-Food Magnate

Early Career.

Few millionaires begin a worldwide empire with a paper cup. But Raymond A. Kroc, who had sold Lily cups for almost twenty years, started just that way. Kroc spent much of his early life as a paper-cup salesman until, in 1941, he abandoned cups for the milkshakes that went in them. He joined the Mult-A-Mixer company, which produced multiple-milkshake mixers for restaurants. When he visited the McDonald Brothers hamburger stand owned by Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California, in 1954, Kroc saw a massproduction operation — using his Mult-A-Mixers in sets — that no one else had developed. Kroc was impressed by the McDonalds' procedures for food preparation: "each step was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort." Kroc reasoned that by combining the fast service offered at McDonald Brothers with his Mult-A-Mixers and disposable...