In Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s Ray Kroc tells the story of how he built McDonalds into a behemoth. The key themes that run through it are his persistence and obsessive attention to detail. There are also some interesting strategic insights on how he views store operators differently than the typical franchise business, and how he selected real estate locations. If the book is too long, there is also a movie, and a country music song telling the same general story. The book is unique, however, since it provies a direct view into Ray Kroc’s thought process.

On Partnership:

One of the basic decisions I made in this period affected the ehart of my franchise system and how it would develop. That was that the corporation was not going to get involved in being a supplier for its operators. My belef was that I had to help the individual operator succeed in every way I could. His success would insure my success. But I couldn’t do that and, at the same time, treat him a a customer.

There is a basic conflict in trying to treat a man as a partner on the one hand while selling him something at a profit on the other. Once you get into the supply business, you become more concerned about what you are making on sales to your franchisee than with how his sales are doing. The temptation coud become very strong to dilute the quality of what you are selling him in order to increase your profit. This would have a negative effect on your franchiesees business, and ultimately, of course, on yours. Many franchise systems came along after us and tried to be suppliers, and they got into severe business and financial difficulty. Our method enabled us to build a sophisticated system of purchasing that allows the operator to get his suplies at rock-bottom prices. As it turned out, my instinct helped us avoid some antitrust problems some other franchise operators got into.

On selecting locations for new stores:

Back in the days when we first got a company airplane, we used to spot good locations for McDonald’s stores by flying over a community and looking for schools and church steeples. After we got a general picture from the air, we’d follow up wit h a site survery. Now we use a helicopter, and its ideal. Scarceley a month goes by that I don’t get reports from whatever districts happen to be using our five copters on some new locations that we would never have discovered otherwise. We have a computer in Oak Brook tat is designed to make real estate surveys. But those printouts are of no use to me. After we find a promising location, I drive around it in a car, go to the corner saloon and into the neighborhood supermarket. I mingle with the people and observe their comings and goings. That twlls me what I need to know about how a McDonald’s store would do there.