who founded today's fast food joints?

Ever wondered how some of today's most popular fast food chains got started? I recently got a chance to skim over an extremely interesting book Fast Food Nation by award-winning American journalist and author Eric Scholosser that explores how the emergence of fast food chains and their franchise business model after WWII have significantly changed the world. The following exercepts briefly describe how some of these popular fast food chains began. It was surprising to learn that almost all of the founders were modest entrepreneurs that were door-to-door salesmen, short-order cooks, orphans, and high-school dropouts with absolutely no previous business or cooking experience!

McDonald's

Richard and Maurice McDonald had left New Hampshire for southern California at the start of the Depression, hoping to find jobs in Hollywood. They worked as set builders on the Columbia Film Studios back lot, saved their money, and bought a movie theater in Glendale. The theater was not a success. In 1937 they opened a drive-in restaurant in Pasadena, trying to cash in on the new craze, hiring three carhops and selling mainly hot dogs. A few yers later they opened  A few years later thay moved to a larger building on E Street in San Bernardino and opened the McDonald Brothers Burger Bar Drive-In. The new restaurant was located near a high school, employed twenty carhops, and promptly made the brothers rich. Richard and “Mac” McDonald bough one of the largest houses in San Bernardino, a hillside mansion with a tennis court and a pool.

Entrepreneurs from all over the country went to San Bernardino, visited the new McDonald’s, and built imitations of the restaraunts in their new hometowns. […] America’s fast food chains were not launched by large corporations relying upon focus groups and market research. They were started by door-to-door salesmen, short-order cooks, orphans, and dropouts, by eternal optimists looking for a piece of the next big thing. The start-up costs of a fast food restaurant were low, the profit margins promised to be high, and a wide assortment of ambitious people were soon buying grills and putting up signs.

Dunkin' Donuts

William Rosenberg dropped out of school at the age of fourteen, delivered telegrams for Western Union, drove an ice cream truck, worked as a door-to-door salesman, sold sandwiches and coffee to factory workers in Boston, and then opened a small doughnut shop in 1948, later called it Dunkin’ Donuts.

Taco Bell

Glen W. Bell, Jr., was a World War II veteran, a resident of San Bernardino who ate at the new McDonald’s and decided to copy it, using the assembly-line system to make Mexican food and founding a restaurant chain later known as Taco Bell.

Burger King

Keith G. Cramer, the owner of Keith’s Drive-In-Restaurant in Daytona Beach, Florida, heard about the McDonald brothers’ new restaurant, flew to southern California, ate at McDonald’s, returned to Florida, and with his father-in-law, Matthew Burns, opened the first Insta-Burger-King in 1953.

Wendy's

Dave Thomas started working in a restaurant at the age of twelve, left his adoptive father, took a room at the YMCA, dropped out of school at fifteen, served as a busboy and a cook, and eventually opened his place in Columbus, Ohio, calling it Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant. 

Domino's

Thomas S. Monaghan spent much of his childhood in a Catholic orphanage and a series of foster homes, worked as a soda jerk, barely graduated from high school, joined the Marines, and bought a pizzeria in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his brother, securing the deal through a down payment of $75. Eight months later Monaghan’s brother decided to quit and accepted a used Volkswagen Beetle for his share of a business later known as Domino’s.

Kentucky Fried Chicken

The story of Harland Sanders is perhaps the most remarkable. Sanders left school at the age of twelve, worked as a farm hand, a mule tender, and a railway fireman. At various times he worked as a lawyer without having a law degree, delivered babies as a part-time obstetrician without having a medical degree, sold insurance door to door, sold Michelin tires, and operated a gas station in Corbin, Kentucky. He served home-cooked food at a small dinin-room table in the back, later opened a popular restaurant and motel, sold them to pay off debts, and at the age of sixty-five became a travling salesmanonce again, offering restaurant owners the “secret recipe” for his fried chicken. The first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant opened in 1952, near Salt Lake City, Utah. Lacking money to promote the new chain, Sanders dressed up like a Kentucky colonel, sporting a white suit and a black string tie. By the early 1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was the largest restaurant chain in the United States, and Colonel Sanders was a household name.

Subway

Subway was founded in 1965 by Frederick DeLuca, who borrowewd $1,000 from a family friend to open a sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. DeLuca was seventeen at the time. Today Subway has about fifteen thousand restaurants, second only to McDonald’s and opens about a thousand new ones every year.

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