have nothing in common. However, their relationship is not united by any structure. "You never know who's responsible for what at McDonald's," says Ted Perlman, a supplier who has worked with McDonald's for a long time. “There is no organizational chart.” The lack of structure goes back to Kroc himself, accustomed to taking new ideas from whoever comes up with them. What counted was not where the idea came from, but whether it would work. And because the system still rewards individual achievement, McDonald's, for all its vast size, retains an astonishing entrepreneurial spirit.

Within the system, entrepreneurial interests rule the personality, but selfish interests never dominate. The entities that make up McDonald's are so diverse, and the power so fragmented, that the system has no master. Much of McDonald's real strength can be attributed to the fact that the relationship between the corporation's management, its 3,500 franchisees, and more than 500 system suppliers is based on the concept of checks and balances. It is well known that the company uses meticulous departmental inspections to maintain work discipline. But it is hardly widely known what powers franchisees have to restrain overzealous corporate managers. Relationships with suppliers are built in the same way. They are not outsiders, but part of the family, bearing the same responsibility for maintaining the quality of McDonald's as the franchisees and management.

The story of McDonald's Systems is the story of an organization that has learned to harness the power of entrepreneurs—not a few, but hundreds of entrepreneurs. It is ruled by decisions and attitudes that are recognized as a boon to all members of the system. But the notion of the common good is not defined by top executives or by a committee of governors. It is rather a product of the interaction of all team members. The genius of Ray Kroc built a system that requires all its members to adhere to corporate standards, but at the same time rewards them for their personal creativity. Essentially, the story of McDonald's is a management case study on entrepreneurial managers in a corporate setting.

In a time when American corporations are trying to imitate foreign rivals, McDonald's history is a reminder that the success of businesses can far outstrip their founders' wildest dreams if they rely on quintessentially American characteristics. It's not just a corporate story, because, strictly speaking, the McDonald's story isn't. Rather, it is the story of a company that changed American eating habits, revolutionized the foodservice and food industries in the United States, and legitimized the now widespread practice of franchising. This is the story of the unknown McDonald's, America's first modern entrepreneurial success, a system that connected entrepreneurs and corporations.

Chapter 1 No, Macdonald is not a myth

“Over the years, I received letters and calls from television and radio, journalists, reporters and other public came to me. And they all told the same story. When they approached your corporation's headquarters in Oak Brook, asking them to give them my current address, they were told that the company had no idea where I lived or if I was even alive. Several times they were even told that in fact there was no MacDonald at all. Your employees claimed that the name "McDonald's" was chosen by the company only because it is well remembered. This is an excerpt from a letter sent by Richard J. MacDonald to Fred Turner on January 6, 1983.

The letter was written shortly after the corporation announced the imminent closure of the same McDonald's restaurant that Ray Kroc built in 1955 in Chicago's northwestern suburb of Des Plaines. This decision provoked protests from local tradition lovers who offered to turn the restaurant into a museum (which the company did), and newspapers around the country placed messages on their pages about the closure of the "very first" McDonald's restaurant. If they said something about brothers named MacDonald, then only a few words, habitually explaining that Kroc borrowed almost nothing from them except their name. By all accounts, it was Kroc who built the first McDonald's.

It just so happened that the two brothers, whose name adorns 14,000 McDonald's restaurants, had practically no place in the company's glorious history. In the era of mass media domination, the creator of a new product is the one who manages to provide it with mass sales. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was Kroc, who founded the company that managed to instill a taste for “fast food” in a huge mass of people, who became famous as the author of the idea of ​​​​self-service or quick service in public catering (“fast food”). This is not surprising, although at the same time it is not entirely true.

Fast food was not invented by Ray Kroc. And he didn't invent self-service restaurants. And the first McDonald's he owned was not the very first McDonald's. The priority of the discoverers rightfully belongs to the MacDonald brothers - the younger Richard and the older Maurice, better known among people close to them as Dick and Mack. They were just the inventors who came up with a good idea, but lacked the zeal and organizational talent to get the most out of it. Knowing how the brothers came up with the idea of ​​fast food, one can understand the amazing process of the birth of the invention. But knowing at the same time why they failed to bring it to life, one can imagine how great the merits of Ray Kroc are.

There were no restaurateurs in the family of the MacDonald brothers, and they themselves had no experience in this area, and in the field of public catering, where traditions play a special role, it is impossible to make a revolution without these seemingly necessary conditions. Restaurants have always been typical family businesses, and the secrets of the profession have been passed down in such families from generation to generation.

The brothers were not bound by tradition and knew no secrets. Shortly after graduating from high school, they left their native New Hampshire and in 19thirty went to California in search of a better life. They sought to avoid the fate that befell their father. He was a foreman in a shoe factory, but lost his job during the depression. New Hampshire's shoe and weaving mills were closing, and California offered an opportunity to try new things.

And there's nothing surprising in that at first the MacDonald brothers decided to use the most tempting chance - Hollywood. They took jobs as set installers at a Hollywood studio that mostly filmed low-key shorts starring comedian Ben Tepin. Soon, believing in the prospect of a new business, the brothers opened their own cinema in Glendale. But in the four years it has existed, they haven't been able to make enough money even to pay $100 a month in rent. They did not go bankrupt only because of the compliance of the landlord. However, the brothers did not stop looking for an opportunity to engage in more profitable business, and such an opportunity finally presented itself. California has embraced a new boom - the creation of drive-in'ov - restaurants for motorists.

Шел 1937 year. The inhabitants of California began to show excessive attachment to their own car. This was taken advantage of by several independent entrepreneurs who began building restaurants in Southern California that served drivers right in the open. The idea itself was not entirely new. Back in the 1920s, some restaurants in the East of the country introduced so-called curbside service, when waitresses brought out sandwiches and drinks to customers who parked their cars outside the restaurant. However, in the mid-19thirtys, Californian restaurant owners took the idea further. They have turned motorist service from an additional service into a core part of their business. Spacious and convenient car parks appeared at the side of the road instead of “patch spots”, and a whole detachment of waiters began to serve visitors who wanted to have a bite to eat right in the car.

By all accounts, the very first such restaurant, called the "Pig Stand" ("Pig Parking"), opened in 1932 in Hollywood at the intersection of Sunset and Vermont streets. As the name suggests, they served fried pork sandwiches as a specialty. Bigger drive-ins soon followed,[1] such as the Carpenters, whose owners are generally credited with creating Los Angeles' first chain of drive-in restaurants. Founded in the mid-19thirtys by Charles and Harry Carpenter, the firm catered exclusively to motorized visitors. She even produced training films for waiters who worked in such establishments. Around the same time, a well-known Los Angeles restaurant owner, Sidney Hodemaker, opened a network of drive-ins called "Herberts", which increased the trust of customers in a new segment of the restaurant business, which until then was run mainly by people from outside who did not have catering experience.

In just a few years, California had grown into a sprawling open-air restaurant, and the new generation of restaurateurs who gathered there stood out for their entrepreneurial spirit. They experimented with everything. In an effort to speed up the service even more, they stopped at nothing. The waiters stopped walking and started roller skating. And soon, visitors began to transfer the order using the intercom, which was equipped with each parking lot.

Restaurants have also experimented with new dishes that would be suitable for the take-away trade. When one night the local band members, who stopped by for a nightly meal at Bob Wyhan's drive-in in Glendale, complained that they were already sick of hamburgers, he made sandwiches that looked much more appetizing. It was a "three-story" sandwich with two pieces of beef seasoned with a variety of toppings. It was such