Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc Page A

said it was all right to go ahead, they weren’t much good at writing letters and they couldn’t afford to hire a secretary. Actually they probably could have hired the entire typing pool at IBM if they’d had a mind to. I hung up hoping that they would have second thoughts and send me written confirmation, but they never did.
    It was a messy way to start, being in default on the first unit, but there was no choice. I went ahead with the building, telling myself that when I got breathing space I would fly out to see the McDonalds and get all the contractual wrinkles ironed out at once. That would have worked, had the McDonalds been reasonable men. Instead, they were obtuse, they were utterly indifferent to the fact that I was putting every cent I had and all I could borrow into this project. When we sat down with our lawyers in attendance, the brothers acknowledged the problems but refused to write a single letter that would permit me to make changes.
    â€œWe have told you by telephone that you may go ahead and alter the plans as we discussed,” said their attorney, Frank Cotter.
    â€œBut the contract calls for a registered letter. If Mr. Kroc does not have that, he is put in jeopardy,” said my counsel.
    â€œThat’s your problem.”
    It was almost as though they were hoping I would fail. This was a peculiar attitude for them to take because the more successful the franchising, the more money they would make. My attorney gave up on the situation. I hired another and he quit, too, saying I was plain crazy to continue under such conditions. He could not protect me if the McDonalds should close in on me. So I said, “Let ’em try,” and I plunged ahead.
    My home in Arlington Heights was right next to Rolling Green Country Club where I belonged and where I had a lot of business friends and golfing companions. Most of these locker-room acquaintances shared the general opinion that I had taken leave of my senses in getting into this fifteen-cent hamburger business. But I had one close friend who was quite interested in the venture. He had a son-in-law named Ed MacLuckie who was looking for a job and who had expressed a liking for the food service business. Ed was working a wholesale hardware territory over in Michigan at the time and it was not going well. So I talked to him. He was one of these whip-lean, nervous types who are often very fussy and fastidious and have great endurance. Just the kind of qualifications I was looking for, so I hired him as a manager of my first store. Art Bender, the McDonald brothers’ manager, came to Des Plaines and helped Ed and me open that store on April 15, 1955. It was a hell of an ordeal, but the experience was to prove invaluable in opening other stores. Incidentally, Art Bender is still with us. He’s a highly successful operator in California. So is Ed, who has stores in Michigan and Florida.
    My notion about using that first unit as an experimental model was a good one. It took nearly a year to shake it down into a smooth-running operation although it made money from the start. I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the thing started if it hadn’t been for Jim Schindler of Leitner Equipment Company. He went out to San Bernardino and studied the layout of the griddles, fry vats, and so forth in the McDonald brothers’ store. Then he adapted them to my plans in Des Plaines. One of the things I did differently was to make my milkshakes with a soft product drawn from a tank, instead of hand-dipping ice cream. This changed the layout and gave us more space. One major problem in adapting the California-style building to the Midwestern climate was ventilation. I brought in architectual consultants one after the other in an attempt to solve the problem of exhausting the stale air and replacing it with fresh cool or heated air. These guys could design a cathedral, but they didn’t seem to be able to deal with my little