The true origin story behind McDonald's - Marktplaats (2024)

While it may not receive the critical acclaim of “La La Land” or “Moonlight,” students of entrepreneurship can study Michael Keaton’s “The Founder” for years to come.

Keaton plays Ray Kroc, the traveling salesman who made McDonald's what it is. Only he's not really the founder. Kroc eventually bought out Mac and Dick McDonald, two guys from California who built a billion-dollar company.

One thing journalist Lisa Napoli keeps reminding herself is that “The Founder” is a drama and not a documentary. She said there are some discrepancies between the movie and what actually happened. She is the author of a non-fiction book about the history of McDonald's called "Ray & Joan: the man who made the McDonald's fortune and the woman who gave it all away.“

Napoli joined us to talk about the restaurant landscape before the rise of fast food and how much profit the McDonald's brothers really got. Below is an edited transcript.

Lisa Naples:They didn't want to expand; their life was wonderful. They bought new Cadillacs every year. They worked hard at their McDonald's restaurant. But they knew that if they sold out, they would be working even harder than they are now and they would not be able to maintain the quality they had achieved in their restaurant. They were ambitious enough, but they were not hyper-ambitious to dominate the world.

David Brancaccio:It's interesting that they really had a vision for their restaurant and their food. They were almost like artists, as opposed to businessmen who wanted to be publicly recognized and expand further and further.

Naples:Yes. They knew that if they could come up with a system that made things efficient, they would be attractive to families. And that was what was missing from the post-World War II landscape at the time, David, when everyone fell in love with the car. The suburbs developed. This way they could have a neat, clean and efficient system that appealed to the families who would become their biggest customers.

Brancaccio:But there is a paradox. I mean, they have cropped hair, like you had in the 1950s, but in a way they're almost counterculture people. For example, they use local ingredients in the original McDonald's.

Naples:When McDonald's started, people were used to eating at local places. There was no option. There were few options that weren't local. And what happened was as we became more mobile as a culture, we wanted that consistency. We didn't want to take the risk - if we went into a restaurant in a new city we had driven to with our family or on a business trip - that the place we entered would smell. So we started looking for well-known brands and chains, because we knew we would get the same kind of food as at home. So yes, the brothers were fashionable in terms of preparation, but they were very typical of the time playing a locally produced game in the city. And it was the whole force behind McDonald's, just like Ray, that made it necessary to standardize fast food in the worst sense of the word.

Brancaccio:Did they get it right after researching your own book and knowing what you're doing while you're watching this feature film? The growing estrangement between the original McDonald's brothers and Ray Kroc, this great salesman with a much bigger vision? Have they accurately calibrated its emotional intensity?

Naples:Well, the emotional intensity was right. The details were not accurate. What actually happened was that McDonald's grew and grew. And Ray wanted the brothers to leave. He had to rewrite the deal so he could own the entire company so they could be in a position to go public.

Brancaccio:So there is a pivotal moment in the film where Ray Kroc wants to break away from his long-standing contract he has with the original McDonald's brothers. The McDonald's brothers can decide almost everything about how McDonald's runs its business. Ray Kroc wants out. So they made a deal. Money will change hands. But there appears to be a deal: the original McDonald's brothers want to receive a percentage of future profits.

Naples:That is the essential lie in the film. The brothers received a percentage of the profits. The original agreement was 1.9 percent of a franchisee's profits. It went to McDonald's Corporation, and 0.5 percent of it went to Dick and Mac McDonald. The untruth in the movie is that Ray screwed the brothers out of the half percent. What actually happened was that Ray and the brothers disagreed. He went to them and said, Look, what will it take to make you go away? They said $2.7 million – we want a million dollars each and $700,000 to pay our taxes. They were so practical. And they were happy with that. It was 1961 and the problem was that Ray didn't even have $2.7 million. It's important to remember that McDonald's almost went bankrupt at every step of the way when Ray got involved because he didn't have the right plan to grow McDonald's until he met Harry Sonneborn who came to tell him it's not about burgers , but about real estate. So basically Ray couldn't find the $2.7 million to pay off the brothers. Harry found the $2.7 million. And if he hadn't done that, the situation, the deal as it was, would have continued with the 0.5 percent and lining the brothers' pockets with a very nice, passive income. But Harry saved the day. He was able to convince these guys, who they later called "The 12 Apostles" in the McDonald's story, and those guys came up with the money that allowed him to buy out the McDonald's brothers and make them disappear. The movie says they messed up, but they didn't.

Brancaccio:I would like to understand this properly. So first of all, a million dollars each in today's money is about $8 million each, just to put this into an inflationary perspective. But the film says that ultimately the McDonald's brothers wanted a percentage of future profits and a handshake agreement was made for that. But the brothers never received the money. Your reporting states: What really happened there?

Naples:In short, Ray was able to raise $2.7 million. The brothers were invited to Chicago, where McDonald's headquarters were located, and basically they got their check and went home and lived the rest of their lives. What made them angry was that for years they never got credit in the business world. They have been erased from history, so to speak. You don't know when you start something that it will become a large international company. And the brothers didn't know that. They knew McDonald's and had seen it grow under Ray's watch, but little did they know that one day it would have tens of thousands of restaurants around the world. And they were already older then. They were comfortable. They were okay with running away. That's not to say Ray wasn't a tough guy and Ray was ruthless, but he didn't kick them out of half a percent royalty.

Brancaccio:Still, it was a difficult undertaking. The brothers wanted to establish themselves under a new name. They couldn't use the McDonald's name anymore after the deal, so they changed their name to what? Was it M's Burgers or something?

Naples:"The big M."

Brancaccio:And it failed. They couldn't compete with McDonald's.

Naples:Well, actually that's another statement in the movie that isn't entirely true. That restaurant survived for several years. The brothers wanted to transfer the restaurant to their employees, and they did so. But all the information in the movie and in Ray's autobiography makes it sound like he ran those guys out of town. And again, in my research it didn't come up that way. That's not how it happened.

Brancaccio:So in the movie, Ray Kroc appears to have two wives. The first is played by Laura Dern, and later he meets Joan, who becomes his second wife. In real life, not exactly?

Naples:No. In fact, there was an entire woman missing from the film. And that makes the romantic drama between Ray and Joan so much more interesting. Ray divorced his first wife the same year he bought out the McDonald's brothers, and Joan went back on her promise to marry him then. And in the time that followed, before she decided to marry Ray, Ray ran away and married another woman named Jane, just to make things even more confusing. Because he just said he couldn't bear to be alone. And he was so in love with Joan from the moment he met her that he went into a restaurant that night to sell his boss a McDonald's franchise. He held the torch for her for years before she finally married him.

Brancaccio:The film predicts that Joan, as a true business person, will come up with some of the innovations seen at McDonald's back in the day.

Naples:Well, that's not true either. The whole idea in the film that Joan came up with this milkshake mix to avoid stores having to stock ice cream, which was very expensive in terms of electricity, was completely wrong. Joan worked at early McDonald's. Her first husband became a franchisee in Rapid City, South Dakota, and like all McDonald's women at the time, she worked behind the scenes ordering potatoes and helping the crew because women were not allowed to work at the counter. But it's a plot device.

Brancaccio:That said, the film doesn't fully flesh out the Joan Kroc character. You spent more time thinking about her and writing the book. She becomes a world-class philanthropist.

Naples:Yes. She was business-minded in the sense you suggest, just not as depicted in the movie of course. At the end of her life, Joan gave a major gift to NPR and a tenfold gift to the Salvation Army. And for the rest of her life, after Ray died in 1984, she quietly became one of the great philanthropists of the 20th century – in a very inventive and unorthodox way. She has closed her foundation. In many cases she provided information anonymously and responded to stories in the news. She was quite a character. And of course she had a great love for McDonald's, because it made her first husband rich. And she had worked hard in the restaurants from the beginning. And that's what was so fascinating for me as a researcher: getting to know this woman who you just see as a cartoon character. And that's really how she comes across in the film: she's just this vampire woman.

Brancaccio:You suggest she give everything away. I mean, there are no assets at the end of her life where this is still present?

Naples:No, it's all gone. It's all gone. People think there's a foundation, which is kind of standard procedure for rich people. At the end of her life she no longer had a foundation. She cashed out all of her $3 billion assets and steadily gave away money until the end of her life. But no, it's all gone.