Ray Kroc was an American businessman best known for growing McDonald’s from a small local franchise to the world’s most profitable restaurant franchise.

Kroc died of heart failure on January 14, 1984, at the age of eighteen, and was buried in Sorrento Valley, San Diego’s El Camino Memorial Park.

Ray Kroc’s Childhood and Education

Raymond Albert Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, United States. He was of white American ancestry and was a citizen of the United States.

Kroc is the eldest child of Rose Mary and Alois “Louis” Kroc, both of Czech ancestry. Robert and Lorraine were his younger siblings.

He attended Oak Park’s Lincoln School. Ray Kroc excelled in debates at the time, demonstrating a natural ability to persuade others. He attended grammar school as well. Ray Kroc started doing odd jobs at the grocery store and drugstores to supplement his income at that time.

The Career of Ray Kroc

Ray Kroc opened the Ray Kroc Music Emporium with two friends when he was fourteen years old, where his friends sold sheet music while he played the piano. It was, however, shut down after a few months. He then spent a few months working at his uncle’s soda fountain, honing his sales skills. He began his career in sales when he was seventeen years old, supplementing his income as a pianist in a nightclub or as a DJ at a local radio station. Kroc went on to work for a number of companies, selling everything from Fort Lauderdale real estate to feminine accessories and embellishments. He was a young, ambitious, and hardworking man who sold paper cups across the country. Kroc obtained exclusive marketing rights to a mixture company and left his secure job at the age of thirty-one to found Prince Castle Sales. The initial response was positive, with 8000 mixers sold in a year.

McDonald’s is now open for business.

In 1954, when things were looking bleak, Kroc noticed that one restaurant in San Bernardino continued to order his mixers in large quantities. Kroc went to investigate and discovered it to be a drive-in restaurant with no indoor seating, run by two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald. In 1965, when Kroc was named President of McDonald’s, he began a training program for franchisees, emphasizing standardization and automation. Kroc established strict guidelines for product size, cooking procedure, packaging, and other factors. In order for McDonald’s hamburgers to taste the same across the country. Until 1968, Kroc was the President of McDonald’s. Following that, he became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1977. Finally, from 1977 until his death in January 1984, Kroc served as the company’s Senior Chairman.

Ray Kroc’s net worth is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.

At the age of eighty-one, Kroc died of heart failure in a hospital in San Diego, California on January 14, 1984. Joan Kroc, his wife, inherited his fortune, which was estimated to be worth $600 million at the time of his death. McDonald’s had 7,500 locations in 31 countries and was worth $8 billion at the time of Kroc’s death.

Personal life and legacy of Ray Kroc

Ray Kroc was married three times throughout his life. In 1922, he married Ethel Fleming, his high school sweetheart, and they had a daughter, Marilyn Kroc. In 1961, the couple divorced.

Kroc married Jane Dobbins Green, a secretary, for the second time in 1963, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1968. He married Joan Kroc, whom he met in 1957, in 1969. Kroc was afflicted with diabetes and arthritis. He was also a boozehound. He was admitted to a rehabilitation center for his alcoholism in 1980 after suffering a stroke.

Facts

His story was told in The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, three decades after his death in 2016. In the movies, he is portrayed as a successful businessman. The McDonald’s brothers didn’t intend to expand at first, but Kroc persuades them to do so.