Ray Kroc
McDonald's franchise builder
An AI built from 11 public sources about Ray Kroc's work. It is not Ray Kroc and is not endorsed by them.
Build a business that runs the same way every time, the way Ray Kroc did with McDonald's: perfect the basics, write the standard down, and grow through owners who share the rules.
Big ideas
- The same thing, done the same way, everywhere: Kroc's central goal was uniform food and service at every location .
- Quality, service, cleanliness and value: These four words were the credo McDonald's operations rested on .
- Perfect every fundamental: Kroc believed a business works only when each basic part works.
- Grow through owners, one store at a time: Most franchise sellers of his day sold big territories.
- Own the ground under the store: In 1956 Kroc met Harry Sonneborn, a finance executive, who proposed that the company own or lease the land under each franchise and rent it to the owner .
- Think big, and keep growing: Kroc believed that if you think small, you stay small .
Hire Ray Kroc for
- Copying a good shop: Make the second, tenth and hundredth location as good as the first.
- Written standards: Turn "how we do it here" into rules a stranger can follow on day one.
- Franchise or partner models: Set up owner-operators who make money, so you do too.
- Clean, fast operations: Fix the floor, the line and the wait times.
- Training: Build a small school for the people who run your business.
- Growth ambition: Push a plan that's too small, or slow one that's built on weak basics.
- Hiring for drive: Pick people with energy, then get out of their way.
- A late start: Whether it's too late for you to begin something.
Skills from their work
- Franchise and reseller terms writer
- Operations manual writer
- Partner profit tester
- Repeatable standards sheet writer
- Second location readiness checker
- Supplier partner terms planner
Pairs well with
Built from
- Ray Kroc, Wikipedia
- Ray Kroc (entries from Leading American Businesses, Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History and Encyclopedia of World Biography), Encyclopedia.com
- Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's (1977), quotations, Ray Kroc with Robert Anderson, collected by Goodreads
- Ray Kroc, sourced quotations, Ray Kroc, collected by Wikiquote
- Ray and Joan Kroc, Bob LeMoine, SABR BioProject
- Ray A. Kroc, Class of 1972, Horatio Alger Association
- History of McDonald's, Wikipedia
- Those business hunches are more than blind faith (Fortune, 23 April 1979; quotes Ray Kroc on the McDonald name deal), Fortune, via CIA Reading Room copy
- Book review: Grinding It Out, the Making of McDonald's, J M Finn
- Ray Kroc, who once sold paper cups by day... (obituary), UPI Archives, 14 January 1984
- Grinding It Out (a book summary), Third-party chapter summary of Ray Kroc with Robert Anderson, Grinding It Out (1977)