[Sca-cooks] Re:American Iron Chef & another question

[Decker, Terry D.]

The original McDonald's was a drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, owned
and operated by Maurice and Richard McDonald.  They chose to have a nine
item menu based around burgers and fries, which may have been to
differentiate them from the local competition.  They further differentiated
themselves with a super-clean establishment and a large investment in
equipment to speed production.  To accelerate service they got rid of
seating and tables and replaced flatware and china with disposable dishes.

Ray Kroc, a Multimixer salesman, was intrigued by a small diner that ordered
8 5-shake mixers when most establishments had only one or two.  In 1954, he
talked the McDonald's into letting him franchise their operation.  Taking
the McDonald's original menu and service model, Kroc opened the first
experimental McDonald's in Des Plaines, IL, and applied R&D techniques to
determine optimum profitablity.  The franchise menu centers around burgers,
because that was the original choice of the McDonald brothers and it has
proven very profitable.

Dairy Queen, McDonald's original hot dog competitor, only started their
Brazier stores in 1957, The DQ Brazier became the standard only in the
1960's, by which time McDonald's had 3,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Bear


> OK... a related question.  Since the hot dog is  the
> *All-American* food
> (more so than hamburgers way back when, when fast food chains
> got started,
> how come Mickey-D's didn;t hawk the hot dog and instead
> picked up on the
> hamburger?
>
> Phillipa  (who suddenly wants KFC)