McDonald's

Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a barbecue restaurant in San Bernardino, California in 1940. After analysing their sales data, they discovered that hamburgers, french fries, and milkshakes accounted for 80% of their revenue. In 1948, they closed the restaurant for three months, fired their carhops, and reopened with a radically simplified menu of nine items. The Speedee Service System — an assembly-line kitchen based on Henry Ford's manufacturing principles — could produce a hamburger in 30 seconds. Prices were cut by 50%. Lines formed around the block.

Ray Kroc was a 52-year-old milkshake machine salesman when he noticed that a single McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino had ordered eight of his Multi-Mixer machines — enough to make 40 milkshakes simultaneously. Curious, he drove to California and was astonished by the operation he found: fast, consistent, and enormously popular. He proposed franchising. The McDonald brothers were content with their single successful restaurant. Kroc eventually convinced them and signed a franchise agreement in 1954.

Kroc bought the McDonald's name and concept from the brothers in 1961 for $2.7 million. The brothers retained their original San Bernardino restaurant, which they renamed "The Big M." Kroc opened a McDonald's directly across the street and drove them out of business. He later said he was not proud of it. Richard McDonald died in 1998 with a net worth of approximately $1.8 million — a fraction of what his name had generated. The original brothers received nothing from the subsequent growth of the McDonald's empire.

Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me, released in 2004, depicted the health consequences of eating McDonald's three times a day for a month and triggered a global conversation about fast food and obesity. McDonald's discontinued the Super Size option within six weeks of the film's release. The company subsequently invested heavily in menu diversification — salads, wraps, fruit, and coffee — transforming from a burger-only operation into a broader fast food restaurant. The McCafé concept, launched in Australia in 1993 and expanded globally, made McDonald's one of the world's largest coffee retailers.

McDonald's reported full-year 2025 revenues of $26.9 billion — up 3.7% — with systemwide sales growing 7% across its 43,000+ locations in over 100 countries. Global comparable sales increased 3.1%, with the U.S. increasing 2.1% and International Operated Markets increasing 3.2%. The company had 175 million active loyalty members across 60 markets, with systemwide loyalty sales of approximately $30 billion in 2024 — growing 30% year-over-year. Q4 2025 saw U.S. comparable sales increase 6.8%, reflecting recovery from a prior-year period that had been hurt by a widely reported E. coli outbreak linked to the Quarter Pounder. The company that Ray Kroc had built from a milkshake machine discovery was serving roughly 70 million customers per day across the planet.