The
first McDonald's "Carry Out" restaurant was built ten
years ago. Now they dot the land. A billion hamburgers have been
served. That's a lot of hamburgers. Just how many is it? It's a
hundred-thousand head of cattle. it's enough flour, for buns, to
cover the state of Pennsylvania. Look at it this way. if these hamburgers
were lain end to end they would measure 68,428 miles. Shot into
orbit they would form two complete rings around the earth. And if
they settled in one place, they would fill Yankee Stadium. At one
hamburger a minute, it would take one cook over sixteen million
hours to make so many. But there are many cooks. Speed and volume,
under McDonald's golden arches, are no accident. At McDonald's "Hamburger
University" in Elk Grove, Illinois, operators and managers
take a three-week course in a regular class-room, equipped with
blackboards and cutaway models of restaurant equipment. the cooks,
at work, are in plain view behind a wall of glass. hamburger buyers
can see the clean kitchens and the production-line methods which
include mechanical dispensers of catsup and mustard, and automatic
grills. The army of consumers who have eaten a billion hamburgs,
and the mountains of french fries and pickle slices that go with
them, have provided jobs for many workers: cowboys, bakers, farmers,
pickle-makers,managers, operators, cooks. Volume production methods,
and self-service are the reasons McDonald's can keep their prices
so low. |
Above
& Below: Celebrating its 10th anniversary, The McDonald's
Corporation commissioned the short children's book Let's Eat
Out. In 1965 With Ray Kroc at its helm, the successful Corporation
ignored that the McDonald's concept itself had begun in 1948 at
the hands of the McDonald brothers! |