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Justin Skinner
Mr. McKeever
English 102H
Word Count: 1421
April 11, 2016
PROFILE: Raymond Kroc
Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc was a successful businessman who partnered with
the McDonald brothers to build McDonalds into the most successful quick service chain
in the world. Kroc was a formal, suit and tie wearing businessman. He had a knack for
salesmanship and even in his golden years, at the age for fifty-two, he was able to
transform McDonalds into a successful global business. As soon as he saw the first
hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California, he knew there was a great future ahead
of him. He envisioned a new industry, the fast food industry.
Born in Oak Park, Illinois on October 2, 1902, Ray was the first of three children
to Louis and Rose Kroc. Rays father was a faithful employee of the telegraph company,
Western Union. His mother, on the other hand, was a homemaker, but taught piano on
the side to earn extra money. Ray shared his mothers talent for piano as well; prior to
selling milk-shake machines, Ray did work as a pianist and DJ on a local Oak Park
radio station. However, Rays interests were not always music related. At the age of
fifteen Ray dropped out of high school, lied about his age and joined the Red Cross. He
trained to be an ambulance driver in World War One, although he never saw combat in
Europe. Once he came home, he had aspirations of finishing high school, but never did.

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After the war, Ray got a job at the Lily Tulip Company selling paper cups. He
went around the country selling the cups on and off for roughly 20 years. Ray decided to
try a new business adventure selling milk-shake machines. He went to work traveling
around the country for the Prince Castle Multimixer Company selling their milk-shake
machines. The business prospered and in the year 1954, they began receiving phone
calls from customers wanting a mixer like the kind McDonalds was using. Intrigued by
all the phone calls, Ray set out to find out more information on McDonalds, this is how
Ray discovered his future.
Ray described the day he saw the first McDonalds restaurant in action with an
analogy, When I saw it working that day in 1954, I felt like some latter-day Newton
whod just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull (Kroc). The whole establishment
amazed Ray. The first thing that he noticed was that they had eight of the milk-shake
machines he traveled the nation selling. The food was inexpensive to prepare, yielding
lower prices for the customers. The employees were well trained and the food was
prepared extremely fast. Ray knew he had to talk to the McDonald brothers, so the next
morning he met with them to discuss the idea of letting Ray franchise McDonalds. The
brothers agreed and a contract was fixed.
On April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, Ray opened his first franchised
McDonalds. The sales were good, but due to the terms of the contract, Ray was not
making a lot of money. As a result, he opened nearly 80 franchised McDonalds. The
business started to collapse and became bankrupt. A friend of Ray and longtime
employee, Harry Sonneborn, came up with an idea to save the company. He suggested
buying the property where stores would be located and leasing it to the franchisees. The

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idea worked beautifully and with the added revenue, Ray was able to bring the company
out of bankruptcy.
After the bankruptcy hiccup passed, the business really started to boom. Ray
established Hamburger University in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. There, franchisees and
management are trained in specific methods of running a successful McDonalds. The
facility doubles as a laboratory where they work on developing new methods in cooking,
freezing, storing and serving. Ray went public with the company by offering stocks in
the business and by developing new advertising campaigns, like Ronald McDonald. The
clown often associated with McDonalds was one of the most successful marketing
campaigns ever done. Other successful marketing campaigns the company had include
the Big Mac, Filet-o-Fish and the Egg McMuffin. With all the successful marketing, there
were only a handful of tasks Ray wanted to accomplish.
The first task Ray want to accomplish was to deal with the McDonald brothers.
As the company grew and expanded, the brothers had been a constant irritant to Ray.
They never met his precise standards at the franchises they sold. Kroc bought the
brothers out of the company for a grand sum of money at the time, $2.7 million.
The next move for the company was globalization. Ray realized there was a
whole foreign market full of billions of people who had never eaten at McDonalds. Ray
wanted to change all that. In 1967, the first foreign franchise was opened in Canada and
it was an immediate success. Ray was now convinced he should aggressively expand
the company to other countries. Ray expanded the company until he died of heart
failure in 1984 at 81 years of age. At the time of his death, there were over 7,500

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McDonalds restaurants worldwide. Through all his hard work, he was able to create an
extremely successful business.
Most of the public does not even know who Ray Kroc is and even those who do,
barely know him. Ray was not just a money-hungry mogul; he was just like everyone
else outside of work. He was a polite, Midwestern man with Christian views. Even
though sometimes work was more important. Ray was often quoted saying, I believe in
God, family and McDonaldsand in the office, that order is reversed (Gross). Sticking
to his Christian values, Ray got married shortly after his return from the Red Cross. His
wifes name was Ethel Flemming. The two had one child, Marilyn. Together they raised
their family, madly in love with each other until McDonalds got in the picture. Ethel did
not like how much time Ray was putting into this new adventure so late in their lives.
She wanted a husband who would always be there for her. In 1961, seven years after
Ray started his new endeavor, their 39-year marriage was over. However, he was not
the single type and two years later he married his second wife, Jane Dobbins Green.
The spark was there at the beginning of their relationship; 14 days after they began their
courtship, they got married. However, the spark did not last; they got a divorce five
years later.
During his first marriage, Ray had met Joan Smith, an electric organist. They
took to each other almost immediately and discussed leaving their spouses for each
other. However, they did not follow through. Joan had second thoughts about it and
crushed Rays heart. The two drifted their separate ways, but they met again during his
second marriage. This time, the two met at a McDonalds convention that Joan was
attending with her husband, a McDonalds manager. The spark from ten years before

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was still alive and burning inside both of them. They discussed leaving their spouses
and getting married again, but this time Joan actually went through with it. The two
remained an item for 15 years until his death.
While Ray was known for being calm and collected under pressure, his two failed
marriages showed some insight into the bad side of his personality. He was an
opinionated man who spoke using lots of clichs and throughout his life, he gained a
paranoia towards certain things. He grew suspicious of government officials, college
professors, labor unions and people he believed to be the minorities. He often was very
condescending when he spoke of the groups above. Ray was also very sexist when it
came to the workplace. He believed women had a place and it wasnt working. This
could be due to the bond he had with his mother as a child; as she was a stay-at-home
mom. This was not always the case; Rays secretary was a woman named June. He
just preferred working with men and chose to employ the least amount of women that
he could.
Regardless of his personal beliefs, Ray Kroc was a very hard working man. He
worked his whole life, even when he was sick in the hospital. He would have his
secretary run back and forth between the office and the hospital in order to hold
McDonalds together. He took pride in himself and his work and was not afraid to tackle
any problem. He was an ambulance driving, paper cup and milk-shake machine selling
CEO of McDonalds.

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Works Cited
Cicarelli, James. "Ray Kroc." Jackson, Kenneth T and William L O'Neill. The Schribner
Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: The 1960s. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.
Gale, Thomson. "Ray Kroc." Group, Gale and Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf. Leading
American Businesses. U-X-L, 2002.
Gross, Daniel. Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1996. 6 April 2016.
Kroc, Ray A. Grinding It Out: The Making Of McDonald's. Chicago: Contemporary
Books, Inc., 1977. 6 April 2016.
Novak, Ralph. "The Mc Donald's Man: What Ray Kroc Hath Wrought Around the
World." People Magazine 19 May 1975.
"Ray Kroc Biography." n.d. Biography.com. 6 April 2016.
Smith, Andrew F. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Oxford
University Press, 2004. 6 April 2016.