Ray Kroc

You could feed a family in your car for less than a dollar.

Nowhere did the drive-in flourish more than in Southern California.

The weather was perfect for it.

By the early 1930s, Los Angeles alone had 200 drive-ins.

Operators hustled to outdo one another.

One place had car hops on roller skates.

Into the scene came the McDonald brothers, Maurice and Richard, a pair of transplanted New Englanders who would change everything.

Mac and Dick McDonald grew up in New Hampshire, sons of an Irish immigrant who worked 42 years at a shoe factory only to be laid off for being too old.

That lesson stayed with them.

They would never let anyone else control their fate.

They headed west in the 1920s, chasing Hollywood.

They found work at the movie studios, movie scenery, setting up lights, driving trucks, you know, the invisible labor that made the magic happen on screen.

They hoped to work their way up to directing or producing, but that didn't happen.

In 1932, they scraped together enough money to buy a run-down movie theater in Glendora.

It provided a really sparse living.

They sometimes ate only one meal a day, often a hot dog from a stand near their theater.

Dick later recalled watching that hot dog vendor, one of the few businesses in town that seemed to be thriving in the Great Depression, was probably what gave them the idea to get into the restaurant business.

By 1940, they had a drive-in in San Bernardino.

It developed a terrific business, especially among teenagers.

But after World War II, the brothers took a hard look at their situation.