Ray Kroc turned McDonald’s from a single roadside restaurant into a system built to scale.
At 52, after decades selling paper cups and milkshake machines, he opened the first McDonald’s in 1955 and helped grow it to nearly 8,000 restaurants worldwide.
This Outliers episode breaks down how standards, execution, franchising, and real estate created a business machine built to last.
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Approximate Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:46) Turning Dreams Into Action
(10:05) The Multimixer
(15:51) America's Roadside Revolution
(22:58) Building the Machine
(32:14) What Ray Kroc Really Built
(43:12) Epilogue: Grinding it Out
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