Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc

about prospective Multimixer sales than hamburgers at that point. Besides, the brothers did have some equipment that couldn’t be readily copied. They had a specially fabricated aluminum griddle for one thing, and the set-up of all the rest of the equipment was in a very precise, step-saving pattern. Then there was the name. I had a strong intuitive sense that the name McDonald’s was exactly right. I couldn’t have taken the name. But for the rest of it, I guess the real answer is that I was so naive or so honest that it never occurred to me that I could take their idea and copy it and not pay them a red cent.
    I was elated with the deal I’d struck, and I wanted to tell someone about it right away, so I dropped in to visit Marshall Reed, my former secretary at Lily Tulip Cup. Marsh had served in the army during World War II. He went back to selling paper cups for a time after the war, but then he married a wealthy widow and retired to California. He was glad to see me, as always, and we had an interesting talk about my new venture. Since I was committed to it, he didn’t tell me what was really on his mind until years later: “I thought you’d gone soft in the head … was this a symptom of the male menopause?… I asked myself, ‘What is the president of Prince Castle Sales doing running a fifteen-cent hamburger stand?’” Good old Marsh. He’d never step on another man’s happiness.
    Others were less kind.
    Ethel was incensed by the whole thing. We had no obligations that would be jeopardized by it; our daughter, Marilyn, was married and no longer dependent on us. But that didn’t matter to Ethel; she just didn’t want to hear about the McDonalds or my plans. I had done it again, and once too often as far as she was concerned. The quarrels we’d had when I took over Prince Castle and then when I’d extended the mortgage on our house to buy out John Clark were mere preludes to this one. This was a veritable Wagnerian opera of strife. It closed the door between us. She dutifully attended McDonald’s gatherings in later years, and she was liked by operators’ wives and by women on the staff, but there was nothing more between us. Our thirty-five years of holy matrimony endured another five in unholy acrimony.
    I had no time to bother with emotional stress, though. I had to find a site for my first McDonald’s store and start building. I needed to get a location that I could establish as a model for others to follow. My plan was to oversee it in my spare time from the Prince Castle business. That meant it would have to be situated near my home or near my office, and downtown Chicago was impossible for a number of reasons. Finally, with the help of a friend named Art Jacobs, who went in fifty-fifty with me on it, I found a lot that seemed just right. It was in Des Plaines, a seven-minute drive from my home and a short walk from the Northwestern Railroad Station, from where I could commute to the city.
    My troubles started the minute I got together with my contractor and went over with him the plans furnished by the McDonald’s architect. That structure was designed for a semidesert location. It was on a slab, no basement, and it had a swamp cooler on the roof.
    â€œWhere am I going to put the furnace, Mr. Kroc?” he asked.
    â€œDamned if I know. What do you suggest?”
    He suggested a basement, pointing out that other arrangements would be far less efficient and that I would need a basement for storage anyhow. I couldn’t just leave my potatoes outdoors as the McDonalds did, for example, and there was no room for a back building on this lot, even if I’d wanted one, which I didn’t.
    So I called the McDonald boys and told them about my problem.
    â€œWell, sure you need a basement,” they said. “So build one.”
    I reminded them that I had to have it documented by a registered letter. They pooh-pooed it;