A Vision of Arches – Ray Kroc

McDonald’s stirs up images of different kinds for different people, but no one can deny the integral effect it has had as a brand and fast food business model in our country and world. When companies get this huge, as with Disney, we tend to forget that they started with one person’s vision. McDonald’s began with one man’s vision in 1940. Under the supervision of founder Ray Kroc, McDonald’s rapidly expanded and improved over the years to become a giant fast food corporation of more than 30,000 stores in 117 different countries serving 47 million customers each day.

Wow.

That goes to show you just how valuable one man’s vision can be! What’s the impact this knowledge should have on you and I? Nurture your vision and don’t let it die.

Some might think of McDonald’s as a less than “amazing” thing with regard to recent issues of obesity and saturated fats etc., and they might be right. But no one can deny the amazing feat accomplished by Ray Kroc when he started his idea.

To close this post, I offer my readers this telling quotation from Ray Kroc himself describing the time he started McDonald’s. His life’s work is truly an “Amazing Thing“:

I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me. -Ray Kroc