1955 - Restaurants

Restaurants

Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's hamburger stand April 15 at Des Plaines, Ill., northwest of Chicago, selling hamburgers for 15¢, french fries for 10¢, and milkshakes for 20¢ (see 1954); he opens two more, both in California, and founds the Franchise Realty Corp. By 1959 he will have 100 such outlets as he seeks out managers skilled at personal relations (see 1961).

Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken has its beginnings as Corbin, Ky., restaurateur Harland Sanders, 65, travels the country in his old Chevrolet loaded with pots and pans and a "secret blend of herbs and spices" looking for prospective licensees. He opened a gas station nearly 30 years ago, turned it into a roadside restaurant in 1929 after truckers started asking for the chicken they smelled cooking in his kitchen, has run the place most recently with his wife, Claudia, 52 (who worked as a waitress in the restaurant before she married him in 1948), but has been ruined by a new highway that diverted traffic from his location. His only income is a $105 monthly Social Security check, but although he dropped out of school in the seventh grade Sanders is a natural-born salesman; wearing a double-breasted white suit and black string tie to project a Southern-gentleman image, he will franchise hundreds of "finger-lickin' good" fast food operators and have 600 outlets by 1963, receiving 3 percent of franchisees' gross sales in return for use of his name, spices, milk and egg dip, gravy mix, and paper supplies (see 1964).

Fernand Point of the Restaurant de la Pyramide at Vienne dies at his gastronomic mecca March 4 at age 58 (see 1923). His widow, Dominique ("Mado"), will continue until her death in 1986 to operate the ultimate expression of France's haute cuisine.