“Opportunity is dead in the United States!” “The tax structure has destroyed all incentive!” How often we have heard such laments during the past thirty years, when in fact greater fortunes have been made and higher living standards achieved than ever before on earth!
Those of us who teach courses at graduate schools of business, courses with titles like Entrepreneurship or New Enterprise Management, know that such gloom is unfounded. We have case studies based on true examples of individual success and corporate growth to prove it.
Every now and then a unique and vibrant personality like Ray A. Kroc comes along, a flesh-and-blood example of a Horatio Alger story, who illustrates in practice what one is preaching and who repudiates the lamenters entirely. Grinding It Out, Ray Kroc’s autobiography and the history of McDonald’s Corporation, is a dramatic refutation of all who believe that risk takers will no longer be properly rewarded. It reminds us that opportunity abounds, that all one needs is the knack of seizing the chances that exist, of being in the right place at the right time. A little bit of luck helps, yes, but the key element, which too many in our affluent society have forgotten, is still hard work—grinding it out.
Ray Kroc visited our classes at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration on the Dartmouth College Campus in 1974 and returned two years later in March 1976, bringing with him several key members of his corporate team including Fred Turner, McDonald’s President and Chief Executive Officer. (The very circumstances of that second visit proved the quality of energy and determination that has marked his business career, for when a major snowstorm closed down the airports in our area, the undaunted Mr. Kroc commandeered a McDonald’s bus from his Boston headquarters to drive the stranded executives through the storm.)
With his utter frankness Ray Kroc thoroughly disarmed his audience of sophisticated MBA candidates. On both visits he regaled students with the story of his life and the history of McDonald’s, reporting in capsule version all that is spelled out in fuller detail in this autobiography. He fielded all questions that students put to him, exhibiting in his lectures and discussions the qualities which have made him a present-day commercial legend: his tough-minded business philosophy; his virtually compulsive adherence to the fundamental operating strategies designed to attract the family market; his emphasis on such basic qualities as courtesy, cleanliness, and service; and his abiding loyalty to his associates, particularly to those who have served McDonald’s since its fledgling years. His talks displayed his humor, competitive zeal, dedication to hard work, and his firm belief that in the United States a person can reach or exceed any reasonable goal. Mr. Kroc is one of the rare individuals who possesses both the charisma of an extraordinary leader who is a great salesman and the passion for detail of an able administrator.
You do not need to hear Ray Kroc speak for long before realizing that Grinding It Out, the title he has chosen for his autobiography, is not a humorous reference to the preparation of McDonald’s most famous product. Instead, the title brings to mind the long apprenticeship of over thirty years during which Mr. Kroc worked for others as a salesman and sales manager and later in his own small business. For the great opportunity of his life did not come until 1954 when he was fifty-two, an age when some executives are beginning to contemplate the greener pastures of retirement. Grinding It Out also appropriately reminds the reader of the staggering investments of time, energy, and capital that were required to develop McDonald’s to its current preeminence in the fast food service and franchising industries.
This historic year of 1976 will see McDonald’s Corporation surpass one billion dollars in total revenue for the first time. Casual students of business history may not realize the significance of the fact that this milestone will be reached during the twenty-second year of the company’s history. To put this accomplishment in some perspective, the reader should be reminded that IBM, highly renowned as a growth company, did not achieve the one-billion-dollar sales mark until its forty-sixth year, 1957. And Xerox, another corporation famous for its growth, took sixty-three years before making the billion-dollar club in 1969. Polaroid has yet to attain annual sales of a billion dollars although the corporation was founded in 1937. Despite the changes in price levels since Xerox Corporation was founded in 1906, these statistics on sales or total revenue do provide some sense of proportion to the corporate history of McDonald’s and its unprecedented growth.
Though the business history of McDonald’s is fascinating in and of itself, it is only one facet of Grinding It Out. For the practices pioneered or perfected by McDonald’s under Ray Kroc’s leadership have revolutionized an entire food service industry, changed eating habits throughout the world, and raised customer expectations. Who among us is not now less tolerant of slow service, overpriced meals, soggy french fries, or a lack of cleanliness in eating places?
Mr. Kroc’s book is not only a fascinating memoir, it is a welcome addition to the literature available to students of business in general. Grinding It Out will be uniquely valuable to those who aspire to build their own enterprise, whether the potential founder is in his or her late teens, early fifties, or at any age in between.
—Paul D. Paganucci
Associate Dean and Professor of Business Administration
Amos Tuck School of Business Administration
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire
June 29, 1976