Ray Kroc
Entrepreneur — born 1902
Ray Kroc was the mastermind behind one of the world’s largest fast food chains, McDonald's.
Ray Kroc was an American businessman whose 1955 acquisition of the McDonald brothers' San Bernardino, California McDonald's hamburger restaurant launched the modern McDonald's Corporation — producing one of the foundational documents of mid-20th-century American fast-food restaurant industry. He was born Raymond Albert Kroc on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a working-class American Bohemian-immigrant family. His father Louis Kroc was a Bohemian-immigrant Western Union telegraph operator, and his mother Rose Hrach was a Bohemian-immigrant homemaker.
His teenage and early-adulthood career across 1916–1954 — across his 1916 Oak Park Red Cross Ambulance Corps World War I service (alongside future Disney founder Walt Disney), his 1919–1922 Lily-Tulip Cup paper-cup salesman career, and his 1939–1954 Multimixer milkshake-mixer salesman career across the American Midwest restaurant industry — launched his early-career American restaurant-industry public profile.
His 1954 first encounter with the McDonald brothers (Maurice and Richard McDonald) — at the McDonald brothers' San Bernardino, California McDonald's hamburger restaurant — produced his mid-1950s American fast-food restaurant breakthrough. The 1954 Multimixer-salesman visit (during which Kroc traveled to San Bernardino to investigate why the McDonald brothers had ordered eight Multimixer milkshake mixers — an unusually large order) produced his subsequent 1955 franchise-rights acquisition agreement with the McDonald brothers.
His March 2, 1955 founding of the Des Plaines, Illinois McDonald's franchise-rights subsidiary McDonald's System, Inc. (which became McDonald's Corporation in 1959) — and his subsequent 1955–1961 American Midwest McDonald's franchise expansion campaign — launched his late-1950s American fast-food restaurant industry public profile. His 1961 buyout of the McDonald brothers' McDonald's franchise rights for $2.7 million produced the modern McDonald's Corporation's complete corporate ownership of the McDonald's restaurant chain.
His subsequent 1961–1984 McDonald's Corporation chairman tenure produced over 7,500 McDonald's restaurants worldwide by his 1984 death. His 1974 acquisition of the San Diego Padres Major League Baseball team — for $12 million — produced his late-career American Major League Baseball public profile. He married Ethel Fleming in 1922 (divorced 1961), Jane Dobbins Green in 1963 (divorced 1968), and Joan Beverly Smith in 1969 (until his death). He died on January 14, 1984, at age 81, in San Diego, California, of heart failure.
His name Ray is the English short form of Raymond (from the Old Germanic root meaning "counselor protector"). Ray was a popular American boys' name across the early-to-mid 20th century.