1984 - Restaurants

Restaurants

McDonald's chairman Ray Kroc dies at San Diego January 14 at age 81 (he suffered a stroke in December 1979 and soon afterwards entered an Orange, Calif., alcoholism treatment center). Kroc has built up a family fortune of more than $500 million and his fast-food chain has grown to be the largest U.S. food-service organization, with 7,500 outlets in the United States and 31 other countries, three-fourths of them operated by franchisees (who have included a U.S. congressman from Virginia, a former under-secretary of Labor, lawyers, dentists, advertising men, a chemist, and a golf professional); total systemwide sales last year were more than $8 billion (see Chicken McNuggets, 1980).

Papa John's Pizza has its beginnings at Jeffersonville, Ind., where tavern owner's son John Schnatter, 23, sells his 1972 Z28 Camaro, uses the proceeds to buy $1,600 worth of used restaurant equipment, knocks out a broom closet in the back of his father's tavern (Mick's Lounge), and bakes traditional pizza pies that he sells to the tavern's patrons. The pizza is so well received that Schnatter takes over adjoining space, he will open the first Papa John's restaurant next year, and by the end of the century there will be more than 2,600 such restaurants in 47 states plus 10 international markets.