Kroc, Ray(mond A) (1902-1984)

US restaurateur. By 1960 he had 228 McDonald's restaurants with profits of US$37 million/£23 million. He controlled all facets of franchising, even establishing Hamburger University in Elk Grove, Illinois, and requiring that all franchise owners attend to learn how to prepare the food. He was chairman of the board of McDonald's Corporation (1968-77) and senior chairman (1977-84). He bought the San Diego Padres in 1974 and established the Kroc Foundation for charitable giving.

Kroc was born in Chicago, Illinois. A high school drop-out, he was an under-age ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I, a jazz pianist, a real estate broker during the Florida land boom of the 1920s, and a salesman for the Lily Tulip Cup Company. In 1941 he formed a company to sell Mult-A-Mixers, which could make five milkshakes at once. In 1954 he visited the San Bernadino, California, restaurant of Mac and Dick McDonald, who had bought eight Mult-A-Mixers. Impressed by their volume of business and their assembly-style hamburger operation, he proposed a franchise and sold his Mult-A-Mixer company.