Walt and ray

RAY KROC TOOK THE McDonald brothers’ Speedee Service System and spread it nationwide, creating a fast food empire. Although he founded a company that came to symbolize corporate America, Kroc was never a buttoned‑down corporate type. He was a former jazz musician who’d played at speakeasies – and at a bordello, on at least one occasion – during Prohibition. He was a charming, funny, and indefatigable traveling salesman who endured many years of disappointment, a Willy Loman who finally managed to hit it big in his early sixties. Kroc grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, not far from Chicago. His father worked for Western Union. As a high school freshman, Ray Kroc discovered the joys of selling while employed at his uncle’s soda fountain. “That was where I learned you could influence people with a smile and enthusiasm,” Kroc recalled in his autobiography, Grinding It Out , “and sell them a sundae when what they’d come for was a cup of coffee.”

Over the years, Kroc sold coffee beans, sheet music, paper cups, Florida real estate, powdered instant beverages called “Malt‑a‑Plenty” and “Shake‑a‑Plenty,” a gadget that could dispense whipped cream or shaving lather, square ice cream scoops, and a collapsible table‑and‑bench combination called “Fold‑a‑Nook” that retreated into the wall like a Murphy bed. The main problem with square scoops of ice cream, he found, was that they slid off the plate when you tried to eat them. Kroc used the same basic technique to sell all these things: he tailored his pitch to fit the buyer’s tastes. Despite one setback after another, he kept at it, always convinced that success was just around the corner. “If you believe in it, and you believe in it hard,” Kroc later told audiences, “it’s impossible to fail. I don’t care what it is – you can get it!”

Ray Kroc was selling milk‑shake mixers in 1954 when he first visited the new McDonald’s Self‑Service Restaurant in San Bernardino. The McDonald brothers were two of his best customers. The Multimixer unit that Kroc sold could make five milk shakes at once. He wondered why the McDonald brothers needed eight of the machines. Kroc had visited a lot of restaurant kitchens, out on the road, demonstrating the Multimixer – and had never seen anything like the McDonald’s Speedee Service System. “When I saw it,” he later wrote, “I felt like some latter‑day Newton who’d just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull.” He looked at the restaurant “through the eyes of a salesman” and envisioned putting a McDonald’s at busy intersections all across the land.

Richard and “Mac” McDonald were less ambitious. They were clearing $100,000 a year in profits from the restaurant, a huge sum in those days. They already owned a big house and three Cadillacs. They didn’t like to travel. They’d recently refused an offer from the Carnation Milk Company, which thought that opening more McDonald’s would increase the sales of milk shakes. Nevertheless, Kroc convinced the brothers to sell him the right to franchise McDonald’s nationwide. The two could stay at home, while Kroc traveled the country, making them even richer. A deal was signed. Years later Richard McDonald described his first memory of Kroc, a moment that would soon lead to the birth of the world’s biggest restaurant chain: “This little fellow comes in, with a high voice, and says, ‘hi.’”

After finalizing the agreement with the McDonald brothers, Kroc sent a letter to Walt Disney. In 1917 the two men had both lied about their ages to join the Red Cross and see battle in Europe. A long time had clearly passed since their last conversation. “Dear Walt,” the letter said. “I feel somewhat presumptuous addressing you in this way yet I feel sure you would not want me to address you any other way. My name is Ray A. Kroc… I look over the Company A picture we had taken at Sound Beach, Conn., many times and recall a lot of pleasant memories.” After the warm‑up came the pitch: “I have very recently taken over the national franchise of the McDonald’s system. I would like to inquire if there may be an opportunity for a McDonald’s in your Disneyland Development.”

Walt Disney sent Kroc a cordial reply and forwarded his proposal to an executive in charge of the theme park’s concessions. Disneyland was still under construction, its opening was eagerly awaited by millions of American children, and Kroc may have had high hopes. According to one account, Disney’s company asked Kroc to raise the price of McDonald’s french fries from ten cents to fifteen cents; Disney would keep the extra nickel as payment for granting the concession; and the story ends with Ray Kroc refusing to gouge his loyal customers. The account seems highly unlikely, a belated effort by someone at McDonald’s to put the best spin on a sales pitch that went nowhere. When Disneyland opened in July of 1955 – an event that Ronald Reagan cohosted for ABC – it had food stands run by Welch’s, Stouffer’s, and Aunt Jemima’s, but no McDonald’s. Kroc was not yet in their league. His recollection of Walt Disney as a young man, briefly mentioned in Grinding It Out , is not entirely flattering. “He was regarded as a strange duck,” Kroc wrote of Disney, “because whenever we had time off and went out on the town to chase girls, he stayed in camp drawing pictures.”

Whatever feelings existed between the two men, Walt Disney proved in many respects to be a role model for Ray Kroc. Disney’s success had come much more quickly. At the age of twenty‑one he’d left the Midwest and opened his own movie studio in Los Angeles. He was famous before turning thirty. In The Magic Kingdom (1997) Steven Watts describes Walt Disney’s efforts to apply the techniques of mass production to Hollywood moviemaking. He greatly admired Henry Ford and introduced an assembly line and a rigorous division of labor at the Disney Studio, which was soon depicted as a “fun factory.” Instead of drawing entire scenes, artists were given narrowly defined tasks, meticulously sketching and inking Disney characters while supervisors watched them and timed how long it took them to complete each cel. During the 1930s the production system at the studio was organized to function like that of an automobile plant. “Hundreds of young people were being trained and fitted,” Disney explained, “into a machine for the manufacture of entertainment.”

The working conditions at Disney’s factory, however, were not always fun. In 1941 hundreds of Disney animators went on strike, expressing support for the Screen Cartoonists Guild. The other major cartoon studios in Hollywood had already signed agreements with the union. Disney’s father was an ardent socialist, and Disney’s films had long expressed a populist celebration of the common man. But Walt’s response to the strike betrayed a different political sensibility. He fired employees who were sympathetic to the union, allowed private guards to rough up workers on the picket line, tried to impose a phony company union, brought in an organized crime figure from Chicago to rig a settlement, and placed a full‑page ad in Variety that accused leaders of the Screen Cartoonists Guild of being Communists. The strike finally ended when Disney acceded to the union’s demands. The experience left him feeling embittered. Convinced that Communist agents had been responsible for his troubles, Disney subsequently appeared as a friendly witness before the House Un‑American Activities Committee, served as a secret informer for the FBI, and strongly supported the Hollywood blacklist. During the height of labor tension at his studio, Disney had made a speech to a group of employees, arguing that the solution to their problems rested not with a labor union, but with a good day’s work . “Don’t forget this,” Disney told them, “it’s the law of the universe that the strong shall survive and the weak must fall by the way, and I don’t give a damn what idealistic plan is cooked up, nothing can change that.”

Decades later, Ray Kroc used similar language to outline his own political philosophy. Kroc’s years on the road as a traveling salesman – carrying his own order forms and sample books, knocking on doors, facing each new customer alone, and having countless doors slammed in his face – no doubt influenced his view of humanity. “Look, it is ridiculous to call this an industry,” Kroc told a reporter in 1972, dismissing any high‑minded analysis of the fast food business. “This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.”

While Disney backed right‑wing groups and produced campaign ads for the Republican Party, Kroc remained aloof from electoral politics – with one notable exception. In 1972, Kroc gave $250,000 to President Nixon’s reelection campaign, breaking the gift into smaller donations, funneling the money through various state and local Republican committees. Nixon had every reason to like McDonald’s, long before tasting one of its hamburgers. Kroc had never met the president; the gift did not stem from any personal friendship or fondness. That year the fast food industry was lobbying Congress and the White House to pass new legislation – known as the “McDonald’s bill” – that would allow employers to pay sixteen‑ and seventeen‑year‑old kids wages 20 percent lower than the minimum wage. Around the time of Kroc’s $250,000 donation, McDonald’s crew members earned about $1.60 an hour. The subminimum wage proposal would reduce some wages to $1.28 an hour.

The Nixon administration supported the McDonald’s bill and permitted McDonald’s to raise the price of its Quarter Pounders, despite the mandatory wage and price controls restricting other fast food chains. The size and the timing of Kroc’s political contribution sparked Democratic accusations of influence peddling. Outraged by the charges, Kroc later called his critics “sons of bitches.” The uproar left him wary of backing political candidates. Nevertheless, Kroc retained a soft spot for Calvin Coolidge, whose thoughts on hard work and self‑reliance were prominently displayed at McDonald’s corporate headquarters.