The fast-food restaurant was born in December 1948 at San Bernardino, Fourteen and E streets. This new restaurant named the Dimer, where every item on the menu cost10 cents - drinks, fries and hamburgers.
The menu was trimmed to 11 items, served in paper wrappings with disposable flatware.
For maximum efficiency, their organized their kitchen like an assembly line and changed their ‘concept’ for car-hop to self-service windows where customers placed their orders and had them filled.
Dick McDonald came up with the idea of the golden arch in 1953, not long before the brothers opened their first franchise store in Phoenix, Arizona.
By the 1950s, Dick and Mac McDonald were profiting $100,000 a year. They had opened eight more shops in Arizona and California but spurned offers to expand nationally.
Ray Kroc, their multi-mixer salesman later became the franchising agent with license to take the company national. He opened his first restaurant which he named ‘MacDonald’s in April 15, 1955.
Ray Kroc also established the McDonald Corporation.
In 1961, Dick and Mac sold their rights in the business to Ray Kroc for $2.7 million. Dick retired to live in New York, New Hampshire and his brother Mac died in 1971.
Richard James "Dick" McDonald and Maurice James "Mac" McDonald
