How Burger Fast Food Became What it is Today: Part One

• We all love a good burger and this is where they came from.

With numbers like 75 McDonald’s hamburgers sold per second and 4000 Burger King Whoppers per minute, there is no doubt that these two burger chains run it all. This is how burger fast food became what it is today.

More than 22 billion a year in revenue and the battle to supremacy creates delicious food. Are you team Whooper or Big Mac?

Burger Fast Food

In the 1950s thriving post war economy, employment levels were over 80%. Demand for quick food on the go was only rising making fast food one of the fastest growing industries.

Burger fast food was anything but consistent, with White Castle growing in the Midwest, Hardees in the East and Dairy Queen in the South. Local regional companies were coming up at the time but nothing was national.

McDonald’s wanted to be national.

Consistency is Key

The man behind the empire is an entrepreneur that bought out the McDonald’s brothers for $2.7 million, none other than Ray Kroc. Ray Kroc wanted the same taste all the time and he wanted to apply that idea nationwide.

Using the same ingredients meant you could keep things fast paced. Kroc expanded to 34 locations in 3 years across the Midwest, using the Speedee system. This was a win for him because he could mass produce good food in a quick way. This was the start of burger fast food.

Kroc wanted perfect replication at all the locations, so much so that Kroc himself traveled to locations to check and conduct random inspections. When he finds Mexican foods at a location and says it should be the same everywhere, he demands the extraneous menu items to be taken down.

The Competition

By 1959, Kroc opens his 100^th restaurant and besides a slew of imitators, there is no really competition to be found for burger fast food.

Down in Miami, Florida, there are no McDonald’s yet.

Dave Edgerton bought Insta Burger King and the two locations. Edgerton likes the tech side of the business, when it comes to the assembly line and speed.

After a year, he’s struggling to stay afloat and needs money. And in comes James MacLamore.

They use an automated burger making machine named the insta-broiler. It puts out 100 more burgers an hour than a team of McDonald’s employees.

The patties are moved through the broiler and a second level adds buns and maybe even sauces. This was a great move for fast food burgers.

The machine cooked 400 burgers per hour with a 28% profit on every burger, according to Edgerton. But MacLamore digs through sales and says he’s not doing well. MacLamore pointed out that it wasn’t working, the business and the way things were going. He said there needed to be more locations.

More people need to know what Burger King is and it will be more well known if there are more of the restaurants. Crazy but opened more restaurants before the first was flourishing. MacLamore wanted to be big like McDonald’s.

Expansion for Burger King

He puts $20,000 into his new ideas for expansion including loans.

Over the next 5 years, 5 new Insta Burger King’s were opened in Florida, bringing the total to 7. Their gamble isn’t paying off though and sales at every location are terrible.

There was a problem, too. The Insta-broiler was always breaking down. The concept of speed doesn’t work unless the equipment works. It becomes a ticking clock when it keeps breaking down and this is already affecting their burger fast food bottom line.

Everything is in a Boom

In the late 1950s there’s a baby boom and the population explodes. The annual birth rates pass $4 million/year. The economy is good and there’s lots of people. This is good for business.

South east Florida is thriving. The state that used to be sparsely populated is now one of the most populous in the country, with a population of over 3 million. Florida also has a booming tourism industry with 4 million visitors a year.

Insta Burger King Shuts Down

Back in Miami, Edgerton and MacLamore want to seize this time of lots of mouths to feed and a booming economy but, they are still dealing with the broken Insta- broiler. Edgerton took a hatchet to the middle of the equipment, he was mad and over it. The two shut down all seven of their locations to fix the issue of the Insta-broiler.

Edgerton works to simplify the design and maximize reliability without sacrificing capacity. He built a conveyor belt grill that could also broil patty. He called it the flame broiler as it gives that “just off the grill” taste.

MacLamore and Edgerton finally reopen the seven restaurants and to go to war with McDonald’s.

Kroc wants Standardization at McDonald’s

In Chicago, Kroc still works to dominate the industry with consistency at every single one of his locations. He has standardized the menu but ingredients varied, which meant the product varied. In 1960, McDonald’s uses 175 different varieties of potatoes from local farmers for their local markets. In this case, a California and Idaho potato would not have the same taste.

Kroc needed the same potatoes across the board for his fries and he chooses Idaho russets for all the restaurants. He knew potatoes from the same place would taste the same and therefore be familiar to customers, because it’s always the same.

For Kroc, uniformity goes beyond flavor as he even wants certain size French fries. McDonald’s fries are to be exactly .28 inches.

For Idaho potatoes, September to October is harvest time. Kroc bought a $3 million dollar flash freezing warehouse and $6 million pounds of Idaho potato. He wanted all his potatoes from one vendor. To that end, Kroc controlled what came out of the ground and essentially started factory farming as we know it today.

For How Burger Fast Food Became What it is Today: Part Two, click the link. You just have to know how it all turns out!