Stories of Reinvention: Ray Kroc

There are a lot of stories of reinvention that are surrounded by the arts. Someone decided to finally write the novel based on the stories they had been telling their kids for years, someone tried out acting, and now they are on a primetime drama, or someone was standing up doing karaoke, and a talent agent happened to be in the crowd so they decided to pursue singing. 

These stories are amazing, and I applaud the guts that it takes to pursue a career in the arts, but many of us don't have to worry about this type of reinvention because if we ever picked up a paintbrush, no one would mistake us for Picasso and if we ever sang karaoke people would be more likely to leave than offer us a contract. Here is a story of someone who later in life took a business chance that would change his life and alter the fabric of America. 

At the age of 52, a milkshake mixer salesman visited a hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, California. The salesman had previously worked as a jazz pianist, a real-estate salesman, and a paper cup salesman, but in the early 1940s, he became the exclusive dealer of a multimixer blender. The blender allowed for the simultaneous blending of up to five milkshakes at a time, and he was convinced it would make him rich or at least comfortable.

The hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino used eight of his mixers, so they were a valuable customer. But after watching the restaurant that the McDonald brothers, Maurice and Richard, had developed, with their assembly line operation, allowing them to quickly and efficiently sell hamburgers, french fries, and milkshakes, the milkshake mixer salesman knew he needed to be involved. He reached out to the brothers inquiring about franchising their business model and name. 

On April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's location, he quickly followed the initial opening by opening two more that same year. Once he had built his operation, he continued to partner with the McDonald brothers and sell franchises to other people who wanted to own and manage their own restaurants. He created a training program for the owner-managers that ensured the continued automation and standardization of operations.

At 59, Ray bought out the McDonald's brothers for 2.7 million dollars. At this point, he had helped establish 228 restaurants, and sales had exceeded $37 million. McDonald's would go on to shape the fast food industry with many other lookalikes, from the assembly line production to the franchise business model. At the time of Ray's passing in 1984, there were more than 7,500 McDonald's locations worldwide, with around 75% of those locations being operated by the owner-manager model that Ray had envisioned. 

Reinvention can be pursuing your dreams of being a musician or an actor, but it can also be seizing an opportunity for success. I imagine that when Ray Kroc went to visit the McDonald's restaurants for the first time, he was looking for a chance to increase his quarterly commission and sell more milkshake mixers, but he had the courage and the open-mindedness to look at that bigger picture and change his career. Reinvention requires being curious and open to change.