Ray Kroc

Finally, Earl had an up.

Son of a bitch.

I'm going to teach this guy a lesson.

I'll sell it for 12 cents and let him watch it fall flat on its face.

They never reduced the price.

The drink took off immediately.

Kroc sold Earl 5 million cups that first year.

Those two extra cents meant an extra $100,000 in Earl's pocket.

Then success created a problem.

Prince Castle's single spindle machines couldn't keep up.

They'd been designed for thinner drinks.

Now they ran non-stop, churning out thick shakes all day, and so they burned out.

So Earl invented something new, a machine with five spindles arranged around a stand, powered by one-third horsepower industrial motor with direct drive, no carbon brushes to wear out.

Kroc later wrote, you could mix concrete with the damn thing if you had to.

They called it the multi-mixer.

It made high volume milkshake production possible for the first time.

Kroc took the multi-mixer to the Lilly Tulip office and demonstrated it.

His bosses loved it.

They signed a contract making Lilly the exclusive distributor.

Then headquarters in New York killed the deal.