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McDonald's Corporation

Quick-Service Restaurants and FranchisingFounded 1940
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Company data updated: October 2026

Founders

Who Founded McDonald's?

Maurice James McDonald, Richard James McDonald, Ray Kroc · Founded 1940 · HQ today: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Who founded McDonald's?

McDonald's was founded by Maurice James McDonald, Richard James McDonald, Ray Kroc in 1940 in San Bernardino, United States. It is now led by Chris Kempczinski.

Founders
Maurice James McDonald, Richard James McDonald, Ray Kroc
Founded
1940
Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Number of founders
3
Current CEO
Chris Kempczinski (since 2019)
Where was McDonald's founded?
McDonald's was founded in San Bernardino, United States in 1940. wikidata.org
When was McDonald's founded?
McDonald's was founded in 1940.
Who started McDonald's?
McDonald's was founded by Maurice James McDonald, Richard James McDonald and Ray Kroc.
How old is McDonald's?
McDonald's is 86 years old as of 2026.

Founding Story

In 1940, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a barbecue drive-in in San Bernardino, California. In 1948 they rebuilt it around a short menu, paper packaging, and an assembly-line kitchen they called the Speedee Service System. Milkshake-mixer salesman Ray Kroc visited in 1954, became their franchising agent, opened his first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955, and bought the brothers out in 1961 for $2.7 million. With financial chief Harry Sonneborn's real estate model, Kroc turned the format into a global franchise system.

Maurice James McDonald

Co-founder 1940

Background

Maurice McDonald worked with his brother Richard before the McDonald's system existed, including time connected to the film and theater business in California. That experience mattered because it exposed the brothers to traffic patterns, location economics, and the importance of serving a mass audience quickly. Maurice helped operate the original San Bernardino drive-in, which began as a barbecue restaurant with a broad menu and carhop service. His practical contribution was not a single famous invention but a disciplined willingness to remove what slowed the business down. He studied what customers actually bought, saw that burgers, fries, and shakes carried the economics, and helped reshape the restaurant around fewer items, faster workflow, and lower waste. Maurice's background as an operator made him sensitive to cost, labor, and kitchen confusion. That mindset became central to the Speedee Service System and later to McDonald's culture of measurable routines.

Role at McDonald's Corporation

Maurice "Mac" McDonald co-founded McDonald's with his brother Richard in 1940, opening a barbecue drive-in in San Bernardino, California. Frustrated by slow carhop service, broken dishes, and a sprawling menu, the brothers closed the restaurant in 1948 and reopened it around the Speedee Service System: a short menu of burgers, fries, and shakes, paper packaging, and an assembly-line kitchen. Maurice focused on cost, labor, and workflow discipline. In 1954 Ray Kroc visited, became the brothers' national franchising agent, and in 1961 bought them out for $2.7 million. The brothers kept their original restaurant, which had to drop the McDonald's name, but the operating system they designed became the template for modern fast food. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Richard James McDonald

Co-founder 1940

Background

Richard McDonald came to the restaurant business after earlier work with Maurice in entertainment and local service ventures. Like his brother, he learned that location, traffic, and a repeatable customer experience could matter as much as the product itself. At the original San Bernardino drive-in, Richard saw the limits of the dominant carhop model: broad menus slowed kitchens, created waste, and made service inconsistent. He became central to the redesign of the restaurant's physical workflow, including the layout that allowed employees to move like a coordinated production line. Richard's background was practical and observational rather than corporate. He was willing to question the accepted drive-in formula and strip away features that customers were assumed to want. That ability to convert customer behavior into operating design made him an essential founder of the fast-food format.

Role at McDonald's Corporation

Richard McDonald co-founded McDonald's and played a leading role in the 1948 redesign that turned a local drive-in into the template for modern fast food. He helped develop the Speedee Service System, which reduced the menu, removed carhops, and used assembly-line routines to serve food quickly and consistently. Richard's contribution was partly architectural: he helped think through how the kitchen should be arranged so that work could move in sequence. After Ray Kroc began franchising the concept in 1955, Richard and Maurice remained the originators of the operating model even as Kroc became the expansion figure. In 1961, the brothers sold the company to Kroc for $2.7 million. Richard's legacy is visible whenever McDonald's prioritizes speed, consistency, menu focus, and process discipline over restaurant theatrics. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Ray Kroc

Co-founder 1955

Background

Ray Kroc was not present at the 1940 founding, but he became the person who turned the McDonald brothers' restaurant into a national and then global corporation. Before McDonald's, Kroc worked in sales, most famously selling Multimixer milkshake machines to restaurants. That work gave him direct exposure to operators, menus, kitchen bottlenecks, and the economics of high-volume food service. When he visited the San Bernardino restaurant in 1954, he recognized that the brothers' unusually efficient hamburger operation was beyond a good local business but a franchisable system. Kroc's background in sales shaped his approach: he could pitch the opportunity, recruit operators, enforce standards, and think nationally. He also understood that consistency would matter more than local creativity. His entry brought ambition, expansion discipline, and eventually the real estate-backed structure that made McDonald's a powerful corporation.

Role at McDonald's Corporation

Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955 and built the franchising organization that made the brand famous far beyond California. He pushed strict operating rules, supplier consistency, operator training, and quality control because he believed customers should receive the same experience regardless of location. Kroc bought the company from Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1961 for $2.7 million, gaining control of the name and system. As CEO from 1967 to 1973 and a continuing influence afterward, he helped create the expansion culture that defined McDonald's for decades. Kroc's legacy is complicated because he did not invent the original system, but he scaled it with intensity and discipline. His lasting influence is the belief that a restaurant can be managed like a repeatable business format, not merely a place that serves food.

Ray Kroc was born in 1902 in Oak Park.

McDonald's Corporation: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Chris Kempczinski

CEO

2019 – Present

Since becoming CEO in November 2019, Kempczinski executed the 'Accelerating the Arches' framework, growing FY2025 consolidated revenue to $26.885 billion and net income to $8.563 billion. He scaled the MyMcDonald's Rewards loyalty program to nearly 220 million active users across 70 markets and completed the orderly sale of McDonald's 850-restaurant Russian operation in 2022.

Steve Easterbrook

CEO

2015 – 2019

Easterbrook refranchised over 4,000 company-owned locations to lift franchised ownership from 81% to approximately 93%, expanding operating margin from 29% to 43%. He launched All-Day Breakfast in 2015, deployed digital self-order kiosks across the 'Experience of the Future' store redesign, and negotiated early national delivery partnerships with Uber Eats before his dismissal in November 2019.

Don Thompson

CEO

2012 – 2015

Rapid menu proliferation complicated kitchen operations and pushed drive-thru wait times to historical highs. Following a 1% decline in 2014 global comparable sales and a 15% drop in net income to $4.76 billion, Thompson stepped down in March 2015 to allow a leadership reset under Steve Easterbrook.

Charlie Bell

CEO

2004 – 2004

During Bell's seven-month tenure, McDonald's generated 7.5% global comparable sales growth in 2004, its strongest operational performance in over a decade. Bell resigned in November 2004 following a diagnosis of terminal colorectal cancer and passed away in January 2005.

Jim Skinner

CEO

2004 – 2012

Skinner generated roughly 250% total shareholder returns between 2004 and 2012. Annual systemwide sales expanded from $46 billion to $86 billion, McCafé was rolled out internationally, and the company completed the complete divestiture of Chipotle, Boston Market, and Donatos to concentrate 100% of corporate resources on the core McDonald's brand.

James R. Cantalupo

CEO

2003 – 2004

Under Cantalupo's leadership, McDonald's launched the global 'I'm Lovin' It' campaign and introduced premium salads, driving 11 consecutive months of positive same-store sales growth. Cantalupo tragically died of a sudden heart attack while attending the global franchisee convention in Orlando on April 19, 2004.

Jack M. Greenberg

CEO

1998 – 2002

Greenberg pushed global restaurant count past 30,000, but rapid store expansion cannibalized existing franchisees and kitchen complexity slowed drive-thru service. In the fourth quarter of 2002, McDonald's posted its first-ever quarterly net loss of $343.8 million, prompting Greenberg's retirement in December 2002.

Michael R. Quinlan

CEO

1987 – 1998

During Quinlan's 11-year CEO tenure, McDonald's expanded from approximately 10,000 to over 24,000 restaurants globally, and annual systemwide sales rose from $14.3 billion in 1987 to $36 billion in 1998. International systemwide sales grew to surpass domestic sales for the first time in company history.

Fred Turner

CEO

1974 – 1987

Turner expanded McDonald's from roughly 2,500 restaurants in 1974 to over 10,000 across 45 countries by 1987, multiplying systemwide sales from $1.9 billion to over $14 billion. He oversaw the commercial introduction of the Happy Meal (1979), Chicken McNuggets (1983), and the first drive-thru windows, which quickly accounted for more than half of restaurant revenue.

Ray Kroc

CEO

1967 – 1973

Under Kroc's executive leadership, McDonald's scaled from a regional drive-in licensing experiment into an international enterprise with over 2,500 locations and $1 billion in annual systemwide sales by the end of his CEO tenure in 1973. His model of owning the underlying real estate through the Franchise Realty Corporation gave the company a stable rental revenue stream and lasting balance-sheet strength.

Keep researching McDonald's

Who Founded McDonald's? FAQ

Who were Richard and Maurice McDonald and what was their original restaurant vision?

Richard 'Dick' (1909 to 1998) and Maurice 'Mac' (1902 to 1971) McDonald were brothers from New Hampshire who moved to California during the Great Depression. In 1940, they opened a drive-in barbecue restaurant in San Bernardino before radically reinventing the concept in 1948 into a streamlined, walk-up hamburger stand with an assembly-line kitchen.

How did Ray Kroc discover the original McDonald's restaurant in San Bernardino?

In 1954, Ray Kroc was a 52-year-old traveling salesman selling Prince Castle Multi-Mixer machines. Intrigued by an order for eight Multi-Mixers (capable of making 40 milkshakes simultaneously) from a single small restaurant, Kroc traveled to San Bernardino, witnessed lines of customers receiving 15-cent burgers in 30 seconds, and immediately pitched the brothers on franchising the concept nationwide.

Why did the McDonald brothers sell the business to Ray Kroc in 1961?

Dick and Mac McDonald were content with their lifestyle and preferred to avoid the stress of managing a sprawling nationwide corporate chain. In 1961, they agreed to sell the McDonald's brand, trademarks, and global franchise rights to Ray Kroc for $2.7 million in cash, providing each brother with $1 million after taxes.

What happened to the original San Bernardino McDonald's restaurant after the buyout?

Under the buyout terms, the McDonald brothers kept their original San Bernardino restaurant, renaming it 'The Big M.' Ray Kroc, frustrated that they retained the location, opened a brand-new McDonald's restaurant one block away, eventually driving The Big M out of business. The original site now houses an unofficial museum.

Who designed the well-known Golden Arches architectural motif?

Richard McDonald originally sketched the Golden Arches concept in 1952 as two giant 25-foot yellow neon-lit sheet-metal parabolic arches flanking each side of the self-service restaurant to attract motorists from the highway. Architect Stanley Clark Meston refined the design into the brand's well-known building architecture.

What was Ray Kroc's early career before founding McDonald's Corporation?

Before incorporating McDonald's System, Inc. in 1955, Ray Kroc worked as a World War I Red Cross ambulance driver (alongside a young Walt Disney), a jazz pianist, a radio music director, a paper cup salesman for Lily-Tulip, and a multi-mixer distributor for over 15 years.

Did the McDonald brothers receive royalties from McDonald's after 1961?

No. While the brothers claimed Ray Kroc promised a handshake agreement for a 0.5% ongoing royalty on future company sales, no royalty provision was included in the legally binding written contract. The brothers received solely the $2.7 million lump-sum buyout.

How did Harry Sonneborn help Ray Kroc establish McDonald's financial model?

Harry J. Sonneborn, who served as McDonald's first president and financial architect, famously advised Ray Kroc: 'You're not in the burger business; you're in the real estate business.' Sonneborn created the Franchise Realty Corporation in 1956, enabling McDonald's to buy land, lease it back to franchisees at marked-up rents, and secure institutional bank financing for national expansion.

Did Ray Kroc steal McDonald's from the founders?

It remains one of the most fiercely debated events in corporate history. The McDonald brothers invented the brilliant system, but they completely lacked the ambition to expand globally. Ray Kroc, a 52-year-old salesman, saw the massive potential. After years of bitter frustration with the brothers' conservative approach, Kroc bought the entire company for $2.7 million in 1961. He aggressively wrote them out of the company's official history, famously declaring himself the true "founder."

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