In the 1940’s, Americans rarely ate meals outside of the family kitchen or in the case of fancy occasions, the family dining room. Prepared from fresh ingredients, sometimes grown in backyard gardens, these meals took time to create and cook but they were the norm. People enjoyed the experience of eating and the very time they spent with one another building the story of their tomorrow.

 

It was during this time that the McDonald brothers, Robert and Maurice, challenged this norm and opened an unconventional restaurant in San Bernardino, California, featuring “carhop” service where patrons would wait in their car for servers to bring their order of BBQ and hotdogs to their car for a dining experience that was quite different from the one they enjoyed at home.

 

Americans started to notice. And, as their business grew, the brothers noticed something too: A growing opportunity to change their business model around the convenience consumers seemed to crave. Looking for ways to operate in a more efficient way, the McDonald brothers did just that. They simplified their menu, replaced the carhop with a service window, and introduced an assembly line style of production to speed up even the uniform distribution of ketchup and mustard that would usher in the concept of fast food.

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Not long after, a visionary named Ray Kroc would arrive in San Bernardino selling milkshake machines that the brothers now needed in large quantity and order his first burger and fries. Momentarily puzzled, Ray Kroc quickly saw possibility. He saw potential. And the rest, they say, is history.

 

By 1961, Ray Kroc would buy out the original McDonald brothers and secure the rights to use their very ordinary and yet instantly memorable name. And soon after that, the first Big "G", my grandfather Melvin Giovacchini, would take a chance on a still-virtually-unknown-idea, the franchise with the golden arches, and buy into the possibility of what it might become.

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Two generations later, over more than 50 years, both the McDonald’s and BigGee families have grown. We serve more communities and offer more opportunity than the first McDonald brothers could have imagined. But even as things move on to offer new and exciting menu choices, technological options like the APP, and so much more, we hold tight to the wonder and excitement that drove the brothers, and Ray Kroc, and my grandfather, to try something bold every day in the spirit of pursuing the promise of tomorrow and what is possible without losing sight of the value of the past that made us great.

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We are so glad to have you with us.

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