Mcdonald's Corporation

McDonald's Corporation

McDonald's Corporation, fast-food restaurant company based in Oak Brook, Illinois. Since the 1950s, McDonald's family-oriented restaurants have revolutionized the fast-food business and the company has become one of the best known in the world. Thousands of McDonald's restaurants in countries around the world serve millions of customers a day. McDonald's restaurants, which offer toy promotions and often feature playgrounds, are especially popular with children.

In 1948 brothers Dick and Mac McDonald remodeled their McDonald's drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California, creating the prototype for the modern fast-food restaurant.

The menu was limited to nine items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, three types of soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and pies. French fries and milkshakes were soon added. By focusing on efficient production and service, McDonald's cut the price of their hamburgers from 30 cents to 15 cents.

By the mid-1950s the original McDonald's generated $350,000 a year in revenues. In 1954 Ray Kroc, then a 52-year-old salesman of milkshake machines, visited the restaurant and became convinced that its concept could work in other cities. The McDonald brothers agreed to let Kroc sell McDonald's franchises (the right to market the company's products within a certain area). In 1955 Kroc established a franchising company known as McDonald's Systems, Inc. and opened a second McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. Within its first four years, the company had opened 228 restaurants, which generated $37.6 million in annual sales. In 1961 Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers for $2.7 million.

During the 1960s, McDonald's began to mount aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns. In 1962 the company adopted the golden arches as its trademark. Ronald McDonald, the familiar clown that serves as McDonald's mascot, was introduced in 1963. That year, signs at McDonald's restaurants announced that the company had sold more than 1 billion hamburgers. In 1968 McDonald's restaurants began serving the Big Mac, a two-patty burger that became the company's flagship product. The company launched its highly successful "You deserve a break today" advertising campaign in 1970. By 1972 McDonald's had 2000 restaurants and $1 billion in annual sales.

McDonald's also began to establish high-profile charities. The company opened the first Ronald McDonald House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1974. Ronald McDonald Houses provide temporary housing near hospitals for the families of seriously ill children. Today, Ronald McDonald House Charities operate more than 170 Ronald McDonald Houses in 13 countries.

Although McDonald's remained dedicated to its established format, the company introduced a number of new products and services in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these innovations proved startlingly successful. McDonald's began serving breakfast in 1973. By the late 1980s, one-fourth of Americans who ate breakfast away from home did so at McDonald's. In 1975 McDonald's introduced drive-through window service, enabling motorists to make purchases without leaving their cars. By the mid-1990s, drive-through business accounted for about half of all McDonald's sales in the United States. In 1983 the company introduced Chicken McNuggets, bite-sized