The Long Game

Are you persistent enough to turn ideas into reality?

Founder stories are a fascinating study in persistence. I was watching The Founder the other day, a biopic about Ray Kroc of McDonald’s fame, reminded me of this truth. You see, the story of McDonald’s is not about one, but two distinct founder stories.

Though Ray Kroc is the person most associated with the founding of McDonald’s, he was not the founder. The founders were Richard and Maurice McDonald, two brothers who had left New Hampshire to seek entrepreneurial glory in California. After some career starts and stops and a failed movie theater venture, they brothers opened their first restaurant in San Bernardino, California in 1940.

The first restaurant was typical for the era and region, a drive-in with a huge menu. Patrons would drive up in their car to park, order over a speaker, and a waitress would come out with their order. While modestly successful, their data showed the bulk of their sales were on less than a handful of items, namely burgers and fries.

They made the radical decision to close down the restaurant to revamp the concept. The new menu only featured a handful of items. They implemented an assembly line system called the “Speedee Service System” for food preparation to dramatically increase speed and volume of orders. And they did away with the drive-up ordering system. Anyone that wanted to be served had to get out of their cars and wait in line.