Seller success. Ray Kroc - Founder of McDonalds
On October 5, the world celebrated the centenary of the birth of Ray Kroc, the man who created the McDonald's empire.
“In 1954 I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and arthritis. I had a gallbladder and most of the thyroid gland cut out. But I believed in the future, ”Ray Kroc recalled the fateful moment when he met the McDonald brothers. In addition to numerous diseases, he was deaf and not rich. Krok was a well-known businessman, but all of his enterprises regularly collapsed. When in 1954 it took him 15,000 in cash to buy a license to distribute McDonald's, not a single bank gave him a loan. I had to lay the house and insurance.
After that, he lived another 30 years and earned 600 million. Now the McDonald's empire consists of 29 thousand restaurants, where hamburgers and french fries are eaten every day by 45 million people. But Krok not only made a fortune - he changed our lifestyle and enriched thousands of his countrymen.
The story of his failures
')
Ray Kroc did not invent fast food, he traded them. Actually, only he could do this. For 17 years he has been selling paper cups of the company “Lily Cap Company” and was recognized as the best dealer of the company. Then he created his own company in order to sell the “multi-mixer” (installation for the production of ice cream) of the new model, but by the beginning of the 50s all the employees had to be fired: competitors had released an improved installation and had ousted Krok’s favorite car from the market. Once again being on the verge of ruin, he began, as of old, to drive around the country. It was then that he noticed that a small roadside restaurant in San Bernardino ordered ten of his multi-mixers at once. “What are they doing with them?” He asked a friend. - "Earn," - he answered. Krok got behind the wheel and drove to California.
San Bernardino turned out to be a small working town, and a roadside restaurant was owned by the McDonald brothers, who invented a high-speed service system that still operates in all McDonald's restaurants. There, Krok saw the metal shelves to which the customers approached themselves and made the order themselves. He saw a huge automated conveyor belt where centners of potatoes were fried and hundreds of milkshakes were strayed. He saw an unusually small menu — nine items in all — and paper dishes that didn't need to be washed. And impossible, indecent low prices: in all fast foods a hamburger cost about thirty cents, MacDonalds sold it for fifteen.
All this magnificence, which brought an annual income of 300,000, unprecedented for fast food, was fueled by a pair of fat people with the same balding height and glasses. The MacDonalds brothers were mattresses. Attacking the gold mine, they were too lazy to develop it. When the first restaurateur, who bought a franchise from them, offered to name his McDonalds restaurant, Dick McDonald said: “Yes, why? In your city, this name still means nothing. ”They did not try to attract investors, and often they were generally discouraged from investing money in the construction of McDonald’s. Giving for a penny the right to open a new McDonald’s - the franchise cost from 1,000 to 2.5 thousand dollars - they didn’t even guess to demand a percentage of the restaurant’s income.
Kroc's offer to sell their franchises throughout the country has become a blessing to the brothers. Franchise cost
950 dollars and was issued for 20 years. And each restaurant had to pay 1.9 percent of its income: 1.4% went to Krok, 0.5% to the MacDonald brothers for using their name and restaurant system. Krok had no right to make the slightest change to the McDonald’s system. Under these conditions, the ruined salesman went to conquer America.
What is franchising with
Franchising is a distribution system. In the States, it was first tested by Singer, a manufacturer of sewing machines. He sold his franchise to his distributors - a license to sell his products. In the 40s, the practice of franchising became extremely popular in the fast food system. The first to come up with this was Henry Aksen. Once he drove into a tiny restaurant, where he saw a wonder - a new freezer, which turned the cream into soft ice cream. Aksen convinced the creator of the miracle freezer to sell the right to create the same restaurants. He gathered 26 investors in Chicago, treated them to new ice cream, and sold franchises to them on the same day. Some franchises operated on the territory of entire states and cost from 25 to 50 thousand dollars. In addition, Aksen demanded that restaurateurs buy ice cream milk only from him at a fixed price.
Thus began the franchise fever in fast food. By the time Croc met MacDonalds, franchises were traded by all notable restaurateurs — Kentaki Fried Chicken, Big Boy Sandwich, Insta Burger King. Franchising has become the perfect way to get fast money. The most profitable seemed to sell licenses to service large areas, preferably entire states. The owner of such a license then resold the right to build individual restaurants and boil down his interest. But franchisors were not interested in the further fate of restaurants created under license. They did not control the prices there, nor the quality of service. They did not care that bad restaurateurs could compromise their brand. They were in a hurry to make more money. The only thing they did not forget about was to supply restaurateurs with their equipment and their goods at clearly inflated prices.
Ray Kroc did not invent franchising, he improved it. He wanted the national McDonald's network to bring long-term profits and not shame its brand. He resolutely refused the quick profit, which brought the sale of licenses for entire territories. Kroc was selling franchises to build only one McDonalds restaurant. Subsequently, if the restaurateur proved his compliance with the high standards of McDonald's, Kroc could entrust him with the construction of another restaurant. Kroc also did not want to cash in on restaurateurs selling equipment and food to them. However, everything they bought had to strictly comply with McDonald's standards - from the number of cash registers to medium-sized potatoes. And for the first time in franchising, he made his profit dependent on the restaurateur's profit.
Such a scheme could not attract anyone. People with big money wanted to buy a license for an entire state, and then resell it. Representatives of small businesses did not like the fact that the franchise operated for only 20 years, and after it ended, they could easily lose their restaurant. And no one liked the strict accounting and control that Kroc intended to establish in his empire.
For the first year, Kroc managed to sell only 18 franchises. Half of them went to California. Half he persuaded to buy the rich regulars of his club in Chicago. Those had their own business. Restaurants did not interest them much. In their "McDonald's" full bedlam reigned. The menu is not known where there were pizzas and hot dogs. The price of a hamburger soared at times. Franchise owners looked at restaurants as their property and did what they wanted in them. Kroc dreamed of paradise uniforms, where equally dressed salespeople, beaming, sell customers the same hamburgers at the same prices. But how to realize this dream, he did not know.
Krok's salvation came in the form of a modest Chicago journalist. By forty-six, Sanford Agaté had saved twenty-five thousand dollars and dreamed of investing them in some kind of business. Kroc persuaded him to buy a franchise. The owner of the land in the town of Vokegan agreed to build a McDonalds there and lease it to Agatha for 5 percent of the restaurant’s turnover, but not less than 500 and no more than $ 1,000. Agate made a deposit, paid an initial installment for the building, bought the equipment, and there was not a cent left of his savings.
On May 26, 1955, McDonalds Agate opened. Two hours after opening, long queues lined up in front of the building. By evening, Mrs. Agathe’s box office contained $ 450. By the evening of the next day - more than 800. Cash did not fit in the checkout, and every evening the couple put them in brown paper bags and dragged home. Two days later, McDonalds Agate began to bring a steady income - $ 1,000 a day. The owner of the land, who rented it to Agate, was tearing his hair on his head: he could not even imagine that a small restaurant would earn 30 thousand in
month, and to pay for rent a miserable thousand. In 1957, Agate bought himself a luxurious house, and his profit exceeded the income of Krok himself by an order of magnitude.
A series of optimists and losers, like himself, went to Kroc. They were little people with little money and a passion for work. The success of Agatha inspired them. The new McDonald's demanded investments from 17 to 30 thousand dollars and it paid off in just six months. For this, people were ready to pray for Krok, to fulfill all his instructions, to spend days and nights in his restaurant, bringing the style of McDonald's to perfection. They say about Krok that he populated America with millionaires. Of these new millionaires, his empire arose. These people, he sold not just a small business. He sold them success.
Hamburgers to the ground
In 1961, the McDonald brothers agreed to sell their name to Croc and give him complete freedom to manage the brand. They estimated the famous letter “M” in cash at 2.7 million: a million to Dick, a million to Mac and 700 thousand to Uncle Sam, for taxes. Krok didn't have that kind of money. There were 228 McDonald’s restaurants in the country, in 1960 they earned 75 million, but the percentage due to Krok was insignificant. The profits of his company in 1960 amounted to 77 thousand dollars, and there were five and a half million debts. Urgently needed a loan.
The chief financier of McDonald's, Harry Sonneborn, did the impossible: he managed to persuade the most famous universities (first of all, Princeton) to invest $ 2.7 million in McDonalds. For this, the creditors, in addition to the returned debt, received the opportunity to pinch off from the profit of McDonald's exactly the same percentage that the MacDonalds brothers received at the time. Krok exulted: at last he could get rid of the bond agreement with the brothers.
But the day before the delivery of 2.7 million, lenders gave up their decision. Sonneborn flew overnight to New York. Sleepy and unshaven, he rushed to the creditors. Those outlined the traditional reason: fast food is too unreliable business. Sonneborn hesitated, cleared his throat and in a hoarse voice revealed the great secret of McDonald's: “Actually, we are not engaged in junk food. We are ... uh-uh ... engaged in real estate. "
Harry Sonneborn was under Croc the same as Mr. Hyde under Dr. Jekyll. While Krok flashed investors' smiles and spoke his teeth to creditors, Sonneborn in the office silence made huge money, which enabled McDonalds to soon become one of America’s richest companies. Back in 1954, Sonnebourne figured out how to combine the restaurant business and real estate. His idea was to, without having a penny in his pocket, gradually take in the hands of the building of the McDonald's restaurants, along with the land on which they stood.
For a start, it was necessary to persuade the owners of the land to lease it to the McDonalds restaurant. It was not so easy to do it. In the new suburbs, where, for the most part, McDonald's were built, there were many free sections on the highway, but the owners of gas stations were in a hurry to disassemble them. Then Sonneborn began offering rent, which was not 7 percent of the cost of the site and the building, as gas stations paid, but 10 percent. Delighted owners themselves found loans for the construction of the building for McDonald's.
But the trick was that, no matter how the owners of the land insisted, they could not get a percentage of the restaurant’s income. They received a strictly fixed fee, which has not changed for the 20 years for which the contract was concluded. At first it seemed to them that $ 700 a month was a lot. But in the late 60s, when real estate prices rose by an order of magnitude, they were fit to rush out the window. After removing the plot along with the building for these $ 700, McDonald's rented it to a restaurateur for a thousand. But when the restaurateur spun up, he was offered to pay not fixed rent, but a percentage of income - from 5 to 8.5%. That is, McDonald's rented land at a fixed price, and leased it for a percentage of the profits.
The next step was the purchase in installments of buildings along with land.
For real estate McDonalds paid, without knowing it, restaurateurs. Buying a franchise, the restaurateur was obliged to put from 10 to 15 thousand dollars on a deposit for a period of twenty years. Fifteen years later, he returned half the amount, after twenty - the second. No interest, of course, was not supposed to. It was this money that transferred Sonneborn to the accounts of the owners of the land as a down payment. For the first ten years of real estate transactions, the Franchise Eastate Company, created by Krok and Sonneborne, turned out to be the owner of real estate with a total value of $ 16 million.
But mortgage payments, contributions for buildings and land were impossible without loans, while McDonald's at the beginning of a long journey was not at all. “Banks,” Zonneborn once remarked, “give money only to those who do not need it. A company that really needs a loan is too much risk for them. ” It was a small matter - to create the “McDonald’s” image of a thriving company. While Kroc was experimenting with roast potato recipes and personally otkovyrival gum in the parking lot of the next "McDonald's", Sonneborn found an accountant and a lawyer named Richard J. Boylan.
Boylan took McDonald’s books in a new way. He realized that if McDonald's rents out the buildings, it means that he owns them. And the cost of buildings and land was attributed to the assets of the company. Then he estimated that in a few years the value of real estate would grow in order, and this growth was recorded in the “income” column. After such uncomplicated combinations (strictly forbidden by the Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting of the USA), McDonald's income — at least on paper — grew four times in one year. The main growth was in the column with the mysterious name “Unrealized gains from the increase in the value of assets”. With such a statement it was not a shame to come to the richest banks and demand a loan on the most favorable terms. “In fact, we all honestly explained in the notes,” recalled the head of the accounting department of McDonald's, “but people never read the notes.”
In 1961, when Sonneborn persuaded lenders to give his company 2.7 million, McDonald's assets, amended by Boylan, were $ 17 million. The news that the true business of the company is not fast food, but real estate, made a good impression. Zonneborn spent a whole hour talking about McDonald’s investments in the best plots of land, finally hoarse and went to wash off the road. Representatives of famous universities conferred and decided that investment in McDonald's was a reliable matter.
Standing above the urinal, Sonneborn heard the good news - 2.7 million will be transferred to his company's account. The MacDonald brothers received a payoff and flew out of business. Ray Kroc revolutionized US agriculture by establishing a new system for milking cows, growing potatoes and packing cream. Big Mac appeared in the McDonald's menu, and Ronald MacDonald appeared in his ad. In Moscow and Kuwait, people lined up in multi-kilometer queues at the opening of the first McDonald's. And the McDonalds restaurant business continues to turn ordinary Americans into millionaires. 85% of the company's $ 21 billion annual turnover comes from individual investors in the United States.
Victoria Nikiforova
Source: http://www.gilbo.ru/index.php?page=persons&art=2661
Comment by Div : Ray Krok's success story doesn’t have much to do with the IT field, but it is of heightened interest for beginning businessmen and startups. After reading it, I considered it necessary to bring this story to the attention of the habrasoobshchestva and publish it in the appropriate blog not as a link, but as a post. If this is a mistake - ready to correct.
“In 1954 I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and arthritis. I had a gallbladder and most of the thyroid gland cut out. But I believed in the future, ”Ray Kroc recalled the fateful moment when he met the McDonald brothers. In addition to numerous diseases, he was deaf and not rich. Krok was a well-known businessman, but all of his enterprises regularly collapsed. When in 1954 it took him 15,000 in cash to buy a license to distribute McDonald's, not a single bank gave him a loan. I had to lay the house and insurance.
After that, he lived another 30 years and earned 600 million. Now the McDonald's empire consists of 29 thousand restaurants, where hamburgers and french fries are eaten every day by 45 million people. But Krok not only made a fortune - he changed our lifestyle and enriched thousands of his countrymen.
The story of his failures
')
Ray Kroc did not invent fast food, he traded them. Actually, only he could do this. For 17 years he has been selling paper cups of the company “Lily Cap Company” and was recognized as the best dealer of the company. Then he created his own company in order to sell the “multi-mixer” (installation for the production of ice cream) of the new model, but by the beginning of the 50s all the employees had to be fired: competitors had released an improved installation and had ousted Krok’s favorite car from the market. Once again being on the verge of ruin, he began, as of old, to drive around the country. It was then that he noticed that a small roadside restaurant in San Bernardino ordered ten of his multi-mixers at once. “What are they doing with them?” He asked a friend. - "Earn," - he answered. Krok got behind the wheel and drove to California.
San Bernardino turned out to be a small working town, and a roadside restaurant was owned by the McDonald brothers, who invented a high-speed service system that still operates in all McDonald's restaurants. There, Krok saw the metal shelves to which the customers approached themselves and made the order themselves. He saw a huge automated conveyor belt where centners of potatoes were fried and hundreds of milkshakes were strayed. He saw an unusually small menu — nine items in all — and paper dishes that didn't need to be washed. And impossible, indecent low prices: in all fast foods a hamburger cost about thirty cents, MacDonalds sold it for fifteen.
All this magnificence, which brought an annual income of 300,000, unprecedented for fast food, was fueled by a pair of fat people with the same balding height and glasses. The MacDonalds brothers were mattresses. Attacking the gold mine, they were too lazy to develop it. When the first restaurateur, who bought a franchise from them, offered to name his McDonalds restaurant, Dick McDonald said: “Yes, why? In your city, this name still means nothing. ”They did not try to attract investors, and often they were generally discouraged from investing money in the construction of McDonald’s. Giving for a penny the right to open a new McDonald’s - the franchise cost from 1,000 to 2.5 thousand dollars - they didn’t even guess to demand a percentage of the restaurant’s income.
Kroc's offer to sell their franchises throughout the country has become a blessing to the brothers. Franchise cost
950 dollars and was issued for 20 years. And each restaurant had to pay 1.9 percent of its income: 1.4% went to Krok, 0.5% to the MacDonald brothers for using their name and restaurant system. Krok had no right to make the slightest change to the McDonald’s system. Under these conditions, the ruined salesman went to conquer America.
What is franchising with
Franchising is a distribution system. In the States, it was first tested by Singer, a manufacturer of sewing machines. He sold his franchise to his distributors - a license to sell his products. In the 40s, the practice of franchising became extremely popular in the fast food system. The first to come up with this was Henry Aksen. Once he drove into a tiny restaurant, where he saw a wonder - a new freezer, which turned the cream into soft ice cream. Aksen convinced the creator of the miracle freezer to sell the right to create the same restaurants. He gathered 26 investors in Chicago, treated them to new ice cream, and sold franchises to them on the same day. Some franchises operated on the territory of entire states and cost from 25 to 50 thousand dollars. In addition, Aksen demanded that restaurateurs buy ice cream milk only from him at a fixed price.
Thus began the franchise fever in fast food. By the time Croc met MacDonalds, franchises were traded by all notable restaurateurs — Kentaki Fried Chicken, Big Boy Sandwich, Insta Burger King. Franchising has become the perfect way to get fast money. The most profitable seemed to sell licenses to service large areas, preferably entire states. The owner of such a license then resold the right to build individual restaurants and boil down his interest. But franchisors were not interested in the further fate of restaurants created under license. They did not control the prices there, nor the quality of service. They did not care that bad restaurateurs could compromise their brand. They were in a hurry to make more money. The only thing they did not forget about was to supply restaurateurs with their equipment and their goods at clearly inflated prices.
Ray Kroc did not invent franchising, he improved it. He wanted the national McDonald's network to bring long-term profits and not shame its brand. He resolutely refused the quick profit, which brought the sale of licenses for entire territories. Kroc was selling franchises to build only one McDonalds restaurant. Subsequently, if the restaurateur proved his compliance with the high standards of McDonald's, Kroc could entrust him with the construction of another restaurant. Kroc also did not want to cash in on restaurateurs selling equipment and food to them. However, everything they bought had to strictly comply with McDonald's standards - from the number of cash registers to medium-sized potatoes. And for the first time in franchising, he made his profit dependent on the restaurateur's profit.
Such a scheme could not attract anyone. People with big money wanted to buy a license for an entire state, and then resell it. Representatives of small businesses did not like the fact that the franchise operated for only 20 years, and after it ended, they could easily lose their restaurant. And no one liked the strict accounting and control that Kroc intended to establish in his empire.
For the first year, Kroc managed to sell only 18 franchises. Half of them went to California. Half he persuaded to buy the rich regulars of his club in Chicago. Those had their own business. Restaurants did not interest them much. In their "McDonald's" full bedlam reigned. The menu is not known where there were pizzas and hot dogs. The price of a hamburger soared at times. Franchise owners looked at restaurants as their property and did what they wanted in them. Kroc dreamed of paradise uniforms, where equally dressed salespeople, beaming, sell customers the same hamburgers at the same prices. But how to realize this dream, he did not know.
Krok's salvation came in the form of a modest Chicago journalist. By forty-six, Sanford Agaté had saved twenty-five thousand dollars and dreamed of investing them in some kind of business. Kroc persuaded him to buy a franchise. The owner of the land in the town of Vokegan agreed to build a McDonalds there and lease it to Agatha for 5 percent of the restaurant’s turnover, but not less than 500 and no more than $ 1,000. Agate made a deposit, paid an initial installment for the building, bought the equipment, and there was not a cent left of his savings.
On May 26, 1955, McDonalds Agate opened. Two hours after opening, long queues lined up in front of the building. By evening, Mrs. Agathe’s box office contained $ 450. By the evening of the next day - more than 800. Cash did not fit in the checkout, and every evening the couple put them in brown paper bags and dragged home. Two days later, McDonalds Agate began to bring a steady income - $ 1,000 a day. The owner of the land, who rented it to Agate, was tearing his hair on his head: he could not even imagine that a small restaurant would earn 30 thousand in
month, and to pay for rent a miserable thousand. In 1957, Agate bought himself a luxurious house, and his profit exceeded the income of Krok himself by an order of magnitude.
A series of optimists and losers, like himself, went to Kroc. They were little people with little money and a passion for work. The success of Agatha inspired them. The new McDonald's demanded investments from 17 to 30 thousand dollars and it paid off in just six months. For this, people were ready to pray for Krok, to fulfill all his instructions, to spend days and nights in his restaurant, bringing the style of McDonald's to perfection. They say about Krok that he populated America with millionaires. Of these new millionaires, his empire arose. These people, he sold not just a small business. He sold them success.
Hamburgers to the ground
In 1961, the McDonald brothers agreed to sell their name to Croc and give him complete freedom to manage the brand. They estimated the famous letter “M” in cash at 2.7 million: a million to Dick, a million to Mac and 700 thousand to Uncle Sam, for taxes. Krok didn't have that kind of money. There were 228 McDonald’s restaurants in the country, in 1960 they earned 75 million, but the percentage due to Krok was insignificant. The profits of his company in 1960 amounted to 77 thousand dollars, and there were five and a half million debts. Urgently needed a loan.
The chief financier of McDonald's, Harry Sonneborn, did the impossible: he managed to persuade the most famous universities (first of all, Princeton) to invest $ 2.7 million in McDonalds. For this, the creditors, in addition to the returned debt, received the opportunity to pinch off from the profit of McDonald's exactly the same percentage that the MacDonalds brothers received at the time. Krok exulted: at last he could get rid of the bond agreement with the brothers.
But the day before the delivery of 2.7 million, lenders gave up their decision. Sonneborn flew overnight to New York. Sleepy and unshaven, he rushed to the creditors. Those outlined the traditional reason: fast food is too unreliable business. Sonneborn hesitated, cleared his throat and in a hoarse voice revealed the great secret of McDonald's: “Actually, we are not engaged in junk food. We are ... uh-uh ... engaged in real estate. "
Harry Sonneborn was under Croc the same as Mr. Hyde under Dr. Jekyll. While Krok flashed investors' smiles and spoke his teeth to creditors, Sonneborn in the office silence made huge money, which enabled McDonalds to soon become one of America’s richest companies. Back in 1954, Sonnebourne figured out how to combine the restaurant business and real estate. His idea was to, without having a penny in his pocket, gradually take in the hands of the building of the McDonald's restaurants, along with the land on which they stood.
For a start, it was necessary to persuade the owners of the land to lease it to the McDonalds restaurant. It was not so easy to do it. In the new suburbs, where, for the most part, McDonald's were built, there were many free sections on the highway, but the owners of gas stations were in a hurry to disassemble them. Then Sonneborn began offering rent, which was not 7 percent of the cost of the site and the building, as gas stations paid, but 10 percent. Delighted owners themselves found loans for the construction of the building for McDonald's.
But the trick was that, no matter how the owners of the land insisted, they could not get a percentage of the restaurant’s income. They received a strictly fixed fee, which has not changed for the 20 years for which the contract was concluded. At first it seemed to them that $ 700 a month was a lot. But in the late 60s, when real estate prices rose by an order of magnitude, they were fit to rush out the window. After removing the plot along with the building for these $ 700, McDonald's rented it to a restaurateur for a thousand. But when the restaurateur spun up, he was offered to pay not fixed rent, but a percentage of income - from 5 to 8.5%. That is, McDonald's rented land at a fixed price, and leased it for a percentage of the profits.
The next step was the purchase in installments of buildings along with land.
For real estate McDonalds paid, without knowing it, restaurateurs. Buying a franchise, the restaurateur was obliged to put from 10 to 15 thousand dollars on a deposit for a period of twenty years. Fifteen years later, he returned half the amount, after twenty - the second. No interest, of course, was not supposed to. It was this money that transferred Sonneborn to the accounts of the owners of the land as a down payment. For the first ten years of real estate transactions, the Franchise Eastate Company, created by Krok and Sonneborne, turned out to be the owner of real estate with a total value of $ 16 million.
But mortgage payments, contributions for buildings and land were impossible without loans, while McDonald's at the beginning of a long journey was not at all. “Banks,” Zonneborn once remarked, “give money only to those who do not need it. A company that really needs a loan is too much risk for them. ” It was a small matter - to create the “McDonald’s” image of a thriving company. While Kroc was experimenting with roast potato recipes and personally otkovyrival gum in the parking lot of the next "McDonald's", Sonneborn found an accountant and a lawyer named Richard J. Boylan.
Boylan took McDonald’s books in a new way. He realized that if McDonald's rents out the buildings, it means that he owns them. And the cost of buildings and land was attributed to the assets of the company. Then he estimated that in a few years the value of real estate would grow in order, and this growth was recorded in the “income” column. After such uncomplicated combinations (strictly forbidden by the Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting of the USA), McDonald's income — at least on paper — grew four times in one year. The main growth was in the column with the mysterious name “Unrealized gains from the increase in the value of assets”. With such a statement it was not a shame to come to the richest banks and demand a loan on the most favorable terms. “In fact, we all honestly explained in the notes,” recalled the head of the accounting department of McDonald's, “but people never read the notes.”
In 1961, when Sonneborn persuaded lenders to give his company 2.7 million, McDonald's assets, amended by Boylan, were $ 17 million. The news that the true business of the company is not fast food, but real estate, made a good impression. Zonneborn spent a whole hour talking about McDonald’s investments in the best plots of land, finally hoarse and went to wash off the road. Representatives of famous universities conferred and decided that investment in McDonald's was a reliable matter.
Standing above the urinal, Sonneborn heard the good news - 2.7 million will be transferred to his company's account. The MacDonald brothers received a payoff and flew out of business. Ray Kroc revolutionized US agriculture by establishing a new system for milking cows, growing potatoes and packing cream. Big Mac appeared in the McDonald's menu, and Ronald MacDonald appeared in his ad. In Moscow and Kuwait, people lined up in multi-kilometer queues at the opening of the first McDonald's. And the McDonalds restaurant business continues to turn ordinary Americans into millionaires. 85% of the company's $ 21 billion annual turnover comes from individual investors in the United States.
Victoria Nikiforova
Source: http://www.gilbo.ru/index.php?page=persons&art=2661
Comment by Div : Ray Krok's success story doesn’t have much to do with the IT field, but it is of heightened interest for beginning businessmen and startups. After reading it, I considered it necessary to bring this story to the attention of the habrasoobshchestva and publish it in the appropriate blog not as a link, but as a post. If this is a mistake - ready to correct.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/41750/
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