The McDonald's Corporation story starts with our founder, Ray Kroc, and continues with the McDonald's "family" of employees, franchisees and suppliers. Many of our early pioneers, like Ray, are gone; but their memories and accomplishments, along with the living history of the McDonald's System, live on today at McDonald's restaurants across the world.

Ray Kroc mortgaged his home and invested his entire life savings to become the exclusive distributor of a five-spindled milk shake maker called the Multimixer. Hearing about the McDonald's hamburger stand in California running eight Multimixers at a time, he packed up his car and headed West. It was 1954. He was 52 years old.

Ray Kroc had never seen so many people served so quickly when he pulled up to take a look. Seizing the day, he pitched the idea of opening up several restaurants to the brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, convinced that he could sell eight of his Multimixers to each and every one. "Who could we get to open them for us?" Dick McDonald said.

The U.S. is our largest segment with nearly 13,000 restaurants as of December 31, 2000, which contribute about half of our operating income. We are collaborating with our owner/operators and listening to our customers to achieve our goals, which are to increase comparable sales and profitability for both the company and our owner/operators

Emerging markets like Argentina and the Philippines typically have higher growth rates than established markets but are also subject to more volatile economies. These markets require substantial investments in infrastructure to achieve economies of scale. Emerging market returns have declined in Latin America

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