Ray Croc could hardly have imagined that he would become the founder of the largest fast food chain in the world. Krok was included in the Times magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the century and accumulated a fortune that allowed him to live comfortably until the end of his life. He owned the San Diego Padres baseball team from 1974 until his death in 1984.
early years
Ray Croc's biography began on October 5, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago. His parents came from among Czech migrants. His mother's name was Rose Mary (née Rook), and his father was Alois Louis Croc. His father was from the village of Bržasy near Pilsen, Bohemia (now Czech Republic). Krok's father made a fortune by speculating in the land during the 1920s, and then lost it after the stock market crash in 1929.
Ray Crock, founder of McDonald's, grew up and spent most of his life at Oak Park. During World War I, he lied about his age and became a Red Cross ambulance driver at the age of 15. By the way, much later, in the company Kroc's Red Cross, founded in Connecticut for training volunteers, another boy appeared who added years to get into it - his name was Walt Disney.
The war, however, ended soon after Ray Crock was enlisted in the army. During the Great Depression, he worked in various jobs, working as a seller of paper cups, as a real estate agent in Florida, and sometimes played the piano in groups.
Fateful meeting
After World War II, Krok found a job as a seller of Prince Castle milkshake mixers. When Prince Multi Mixer sales fell due to competition with cheaper Hamilton Beach products, Croc was impressed by Richard and Maurice MacDonalds, who bought eight of his multimixers for their store in San Bernardino, California, and visited them in 1954. Ray Kroc has made sure that the concept and design of this small chain of stores and fast foods can expand throughout the country.
Ray Croc: how the empire was created
Having visited about a thousand kitchens, Krok believed that the MacDonald brothers had the best company he had ever seen. The restaurant was clean, modern, mechanized, and the staff professional and well-groomed. Roadside burgers most often did not meet the demands of bikers and local rebellious teenagers who often traveled in the district, and at McDonald's Ray Krok saw the ideal implementation of the concept of a fast food restaurant.
Kroc opened the first McDonald's with the McDonald brothers in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Effective manager
Since then, the story of Ray Crock and McDonald's has rushed forward at the speed of a freight train. After concluding a partnership agreement with the brothers, MacDonald Crock sent a letter to Walt Disney. They met as ambulance trainees in Sound Beach, Connecticut, during World War I. Krok wrote: “I recently took over McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants. “I would like to know if it is possible to include it in your Disney Development concern.” According to one version, Disney agreed, with the condition to raise the price of french fries from ten to fifteen cents, which would allow him to make a profit. Krok refused to neglect the interests of his regular customers and decided to do without the help of Disney and his studio.
Journalist Eric Schlosser, in his Fast Food book, wrote that this was a proactive review by some McDonald's marketing executives. Most likely, Krok’s proposal simply remained unanswered.
Krok is credited with a number of innovative changes to the food franchise model. The main among them was the sale of only one franchise of one store instead of the sale of larger territorial franchises that were common at that time in this industry. Krok admitted that selling exclusive licenses to large markets is the fastest way for a franchisor to make money, but he also saw in practice a loss in the ability of the franchisor to control the progress and direction of the network. First of all, in accordance with contractual obligations with the McDonald brothers, Krok wanted uniformity in service and quality among all McDonald's places. Krok knew that it would be difficult to achieve this goal without influencing all the institutions that belong to the network (franchise).
Ray Crock's policy on McDonald's leadership included creating seats only in the suburban areas, and not in the city center, as ordinary citizens could eat there after the main working hours were over. The restaurants, according to Kroc, were supposed to comply with all possible sanitary and hygienic standards, and the staff should be clean, well-groomed and polite with the children. Food should be a strictly fixed, standardized product. Restaurants were not allowed in any way to deviate from the specific menu and signature recipes. Krok insisted: each seasoning container should be kept in perfect cleanliness. Smoking and paintball at McDonald's have also always been banned.
Krok himself at first hardly adhered to his strict rules. In addition, several California chain restaurants began to offer dishes that were not supposed to be on the menu, changing prices, recipes or making various other deviations from the general strategy of the company. For some time, the ambitious manager continued to license McDonald's in California, preferring to focus on the Midwest, where he thought people were more conservative and less likely to challenge the authorities.
Kroc had a contemptuous opinion about the MBA (Master of Business Administration) and people who attended business schools or graduated in management, believing that they lacked competitiveness or quick-wittedness in the market. For a while, McDonald's had a policy of not hiring people with an MBA degree. He also banned McDonald's executives from having secretaries and demanded that they answer on their own for phone calls. It was assumed that they would follow a certain dress code, which implied, among other things, a ban on beards. The company encouraged employees with special diplomas and accolades issued for honest observance of franchise rules.
Big ambition
During the 1960s, many new fast food chains appeared on the market that copied McDonald's, including Burger King, Burger Chef, Arbys, KFC, and Hardee's. Ray Kroc spoke of competitors with undisguised contempt, saying that they could not offer the quality of food, services, affordable prices and sanitation, as in McDonald's. He resisted joining any trading organization or concern, fearing to accidentally reveal his trade secrets.
Croc was embarrassed by the MacDonald brothers' desire to maintain only a small number of restaurants. The brothers also consistently convinced Kroka that he was not entitled to change things such as the original plan (for example, to introduce stricter rules in Illinois than in California), but despite Krok’s requests, the brothers never sent any official letters that legally allowed changes to the rules of the restaurant chain. In 1961, he bought the company for $ 2.7 million, calculating everything in such a way as to provide each brother with $ 1 million after taxes. Obtaining funds for the repurchase was difficult due to the existing debt formed after the sharp and rapid expansion of the company. However, Harry Sonneborn, whom Kroc called his "financial wizard", was able to raise the necessary funds.
Croc was very angry that the brothers did not give him some real estate and rights to the very first restaurant in San Bernardino. In a fit of rage, Croc later opened a new McDonald's restaurant near the original MacDonald Brothers restaurant, which was later renamed The Big M because the brothers neglected to retain the rights to the name. Big M closed six years later, unable to compete with the first brainchild of the MacDonald brothers. It is alleged that as part of the buyback, Krok promised, based on a handshake agreement, to continue to pay an annual fee of 0.5% of the original agreement, but there is no evidence of this other than the MacDonald’s nephew’s claim. None of the brothers publicly expressed disappointment about the deal. Speaking to someone about the ransom, Richard MacDonald reportedly said he was not sorry. Since then, the company has been called the McDonalds Ray Crock.
Krok supported the Speedee Service System conveyor for burger production, which was introduced by the MacDonald brothers in 1948. He standardized all cooking operations, ensuring that every hamburger was the same in every restaurant. He set strict rules for the entire franchise in all matters related to cooking, portion sizes, cooking time and methods, package size and design. Krok also canceled cost-cutting measures, such as using soy in meat for hamburgers. These strict rules apply to customer service standards. For example, money must be returned to customers whose orders were incorrect, or to customers who had to wait more than five minutes.
At the time of Kroc’s death, there were 7,500 retail outlets in the United States and 31 in other countries around the world. The total sales of all restaurants totaled more than $ 8 billion in 1983, and his personal fortune was about $ 600 million.
Baseball hobby
In 1974, Krok retired from the affairs of the company. He decided to return to baseball, his favorite sport, when he found out that the Padres San Diego team was for sale. It was conditionally sold to Joseph Danzansky, the owner of a food store in Washington, who was planning to move the team to Washington. However, the sale was related to the lawsuit, when Krok acquired the team for $ 12 million, keeping it in San Diego. In the first year of Krok’s management of the team, in 1974, the Padres lost 102 games, but attracted the attention of more than one million people, which is a record success in terms of box office in the major leagues of that time. Their previous maximum attendance was 644,772 in 1972. Their captain said that Krok was, above all, a big fan of the team.
On April 9, 1974, at a time when the Padres were on the verge of defeat at the opening of the season in San Diego, Krok picked up a microphone and delivered a speech to 39,083 fans: “I have never seen a more stupid game than this in my life” . The crowd met his speech with great approval and applause. But in the end, disappointed with the team, he transferred control to her to his son-in-law Ballard Smith. “Hamburgers make more sense than baseball,” Crock said then.
After his death, the Padres since 1984 began to wear special armbands with the initials of Krok - RAK. In the same year they won the NL pennant and played in the 1984 World Tournament. In 1999, Krok was inducted posthumously as part of the first class of the San Diego Padres Hall of Fame.
Socio-political position
The Krok Foundation supported research, treatment and education in various fields of medicine, such as the fight against alcoholism, diabetes, arthritis and multiple sclerosis. A vivid example of this public position is the non-profit organization Ronald McDonald House, founded by Ray, which provides free housing for parents near medical facilities in which their children are treated.
Throughout his life, Republican Krok firmly believed in self-sufficiency and strongly opposed the expansion of government and the New Deal. He provoked a mixed reaction from the public when it became known about his $ 255,000 donation to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. The entrepreneur was accused by some politicians - notably Senator Harrison Williams - of wanting to influence Nixon so that the latter would veto the minimum wage bill if he won.
Personal life
Relations with the first wives of Ray Croc - Ethel Fleming (1922–1961) and Jane Dobbins Green (1963–1968) - ended in divorce. His third wife, Joan Crock, was a philanthropist and significantly increased her charitable contribution after her husband's death. She made donations for a variety of issues that interested her. For example, to promote peace and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. After her death in 2003, her remaining $ 2.7 billion worth of property was distributed among a number of non-profit organizations. This included a donation of $ 1.5 billion to the Salvation Army for the construction of 26 Kroc centers, community centers serving hungry areas across the country. The children of Ray Crock received almost nothing from the inheritance.
Death
In 1980, after a stroke, Krok was sent to a rehabilitation center for treatment for alcoholism. He died of heart failure four years later at a hospital in San Diego, California, aged 81, and was buried in the El Camino Memorial Park in the Sorrento Valley in San Diego.
In popular culture
Kroc's acquisition of the McDonald's franchise, as well as his “Croc-style business tactics,” are the theme song of 2004 by Mark Knopfler's Boom, Like That.
Croc is portrayed by Michael Keaton in the 2016 film Founder. The film shows how Ray Croc's empire was created - McDonald's. Moreover, it does not criticize the entrepreneur’s most ethical attitude towards the MacDonald brothers.