Early history of McDonalds

In 1937, the MacDonald brothers opened a drive-in serving shakes restaurant (the Airdrome) in Arcadia, California selling hot dogs, orange juice, coffee and tea.

In 1940, Dick and Mac McDonald opened McDonalds Bar-B-que restaurant in San Bernardino, California.  Dick and Mac made fifteen-cent burgers and sold them like crazy. Little did they know that it was a restaurant that would not only change the face of culture but eventually impact on economics across the entire world.

The restaurant was mechanized and standardized far ahead of its time. Cast-iron grills that lost heat when loaded with beef were replaced by stainless-steel grills that were double the size and easier to clean and held heat better.

Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. It’s selling 15 cent hamburgers and 10cent fries.

Dick McDonald came up with the idea of the golden arch in 1953, not long before the brothers opened their first franchise store in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 1955, Ray Kroc, a salesman who owned the rights to the mixers the brothers used to make the milkshakes, was granted the exclusive rights to develop the McDonalds franchise in the United States.

The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall.

Ray Kroc eventually took over the business, drove the McDonald’s restaurants into success, and later led McDonald worldwide expansion.

In 1961, Dick and Mac sold their rights in the business to Ray Kroc for $2.7 million.
Early history of McDonalds

Pizza in America

Before the 1950s, most people in America had never seen or heard of ‘pizza’. In the mass emigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States between 1880 and 1920 came multitudes of Southern Italian peasants fleeing from economic hardship.

From its humble origin on the street of Naples, pizza found its second home in the United States. Decades after the first Italian immigrants sold pizza on the streets of New York, the taste for pizza eventually saturated the interior of the country.

The first pizzeria in United States was opened in 1905 by Genarro Lombardi in the city of New York. He is credited with selling some of the first slices out of his place at 53rd ½ Spring Street in Little Italy.

Pizza became popular in the mid-twentieth century. It incorporated ingredients and styles and reflected the relative abundance of food in the country at the time. The first truly American pizza was born in 1943 when Chicagoan Ike Sewell introduced deep-dish pizza to the Windy City.

Chain restaurants quickly began popping up all over America. The first Pizza Hut sprang up in Wichita, Kansas, around 1958. It was also during 1950s that the first frozen pizza began lining the shelves at grocery stores.

In 1954, Sherwood Johnson and Ed Plummer opened the first Shakey’s Pizza Parlor restaurant in Sacramento. Shakey’s became the first franchise pizza chain in United States.
Pizza in America