Ray Kroc Quotes

120 Ray Kroc Quotes

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The property was underwater, but there was a solid bed of coral rock beneath, and the dredging for the intercoastal raised all the lots high and dry, with permanent abutments. People who purchased those lots really got a bargain, even though the prices were astronomical for those times, because the area is now one of the most beautiful in all of Florida, and lots there are worth many times what they sold them for.
Ray Kroc

Just when I was getting into the swing of selling these lots, the whole business vanished.
Ray Kroc

One man’s famine makes another man’s feast…
Ray Kroc

[My] Father seemed to have a Midas touch when it came to picking property. He was so busy pyramiding his land holdings, though, that he somehow failed to see – as we all failed to see – whatever warnings there might have been of the impending crash.
Ray Kroc

[My father] He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1930. He had worried himself to death. On his desk the day he died were two pieces of paper – his last paycheck from the telegraph company and a garnishment notice for the entire amount of his wages.
Ray Kroc

[On refusing to take a 10% pay cut during the recession when he was their number one salesman] I can understand it, perfectly. But I refuse to accept it. This company has already squeezed me out of pennies. Now, the minute things get a little tough, I’m supposed to sacrifice dollars. Well, I’m not doing it. You can have your damned job with its ten percent pay cut. I’m quittin’ and that’s that.
Ray Kroc

I felt several inches taller when I left that office. I’d won.
Ray Kroc

[On being accused that ‘I hear that you’ve been telling your salesmen how to make money on their expense accounts’] That’s right. I have…. Here is exactly what I told my men: Each of you gets a certain amount per diem for your expenses on the road. You get so much for a room, so much for travel, and so much for food. Instead of staying in a room with a bath, take a walk down the hall. You’ll be just as clean, and you’ll save money. When you take the train, get an upper berth, you’ll sleep just as well as in a lower and it will cost you less. Don’t eat breakfast in the fancy hotel restaurant, go the YMCA cafeteria. Have prunes and oatmeal; it’s filling and it’s good for you; it keeps you being a regular guy. … I walked away feeling tall again…
Ray Kroc

I liked Earl [Prince] immediately. He was a very plain-spoken, straight-forward guy. In later years the girls in my office would laugh about his frugality. Here was this highly successful, wealthy man who wore a musty old hat and somewhat seedy looking clothes. He could afford to take the entire staff out to lunch at the Pump Room, but he steadfastly refused to pay Chicago restaurant prices – any restaurant. Instead he’d send out for a peanut butter sandwich. I never knocked his frugality, of course; I respected it although he may have carried it to extremes.
Ray Kroc

You just have to trust my instincts.
Ray Kroc



There’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish if you set your mind to it.
Ray Kroc

[On the art of entrepreneurship] You’re not going to get it free, and you have to take risks. I don’t mean to be a daredevil, that’s crazy. But you have to take risks, and in some cases you must go for broke.
Ray Kroc

If you believe in something, you’ve got to be in it to the ends of your toes.
Ray Kroc

Taking reasonable risks is part of the challenge. It’s the fun.
Ray Kroc

I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald’s on the foundation I had laid.
Ray Kroc

Others marveled that I could work twelve or fourteen hours a day at a busy convention, then entertain customers until two or three o’clock in the morning, and still be out of bed early, ready to collar my next client.
Ray Kroc

My secret was in getting the most out of every minute of rest. I guess I couldn’t have averaged more than six hours of sleep a night. Many times I got four hours or less. But I slept as hard as I worked.
Ray Kroc

I considered myself a connoisseur of kitchens; after all, selling Multimixers took me into thousands of them.
Ray Kroc

I prided myself on being able to tell which operations would appeal to the public and which would fail.
Ray Kroc

[On the hassle of disassembling the Multimixers after trade shows] I sometimes wished I’d gotten into selling something I could fit in my pocket.
Ray Kroc



[On June Martino] If she didn’t know something, she’d burrow into library books and find out.
Ray Kroc

The party was a terrific success, but ‘Fold-a-Nook’ was an enormous flop. I got not a single order.
Ray Kroc

A good executive does not like mistakes. He will allow his subordinates an honest mistake once in a while, but he will never condone or forgive dishonesty.
Ray Kroc

[On him first seeing how the McDonalds bros system worked] When I saw it working that day in 1954, I felt like some latter-day Newton who’d just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull.
Ray Kroc

The simplicity of the procedure allowed the McDonalds to concentrate on quality in every step, and that was the trick.
Ray Kroc

[On signing an agreement that meant he couldn’t change the plans of any McDonald’s stores unless the changes were spelled out in writing, signed by both McDonald brothers and sent back to him by registered mail.] This seemingly innocuous requirement created massive problems for me. There’s an old saying that a man who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer, and it certainly applied in this instance.
Ray Kroc

I have often been asked why I didn’t simply copy the McDonalds brothers’ plan. They showed me the whole thing and it would have been an easy matter, seemingly to pattern a restaurant after theirs. Truthfully, the idea never crossed my mind. I saw it through the eyes of a salesman. Here was a complete package, and I could get out and talk up a storm about it. … I guess the real answer is that I was so naïve or so honest and that it never occurred to me that I could take their idea and copy it and not pay them a red cent.
Ray Kroc

[On his wife Ethel’s reaction to him and doing the McDonald’s deal] This was a veritable Wagnerian opera of strife.
Ray Kroc

I had no time to bother with emotional stress, though. I had to find a site for my first McDonald’s store and start building.
Ray Kroc

My troubles started the minute I got together with my contractor and went over with him the plans furnished by the McDonald’s architect. That structure was designed for a semi-desert location. It was on a slab, no basement, and it had a swamp cooler on the roof.
Ray Kroc



I brought in architectural consultants one after the other in an attempt to solve the problem of exhausting the stale air and replacing it with fresh cool or heated air. These guys could design a cathedral, but they didn’t seem to be able to deal with my little hamburger store.
Ray Kroc

One of my suppliers told me, ‘Ray, you know you aren’t in the hamburger business at all. You’re in the French-fry business. I don’t know how the livin’ hell you do it, but you’ve got the best French fries in town, and that’s what’s selling folks on your place.’ You know, I think you’re right, I replied. But, you son of a bitch, don’t you dare tell anyone about it!
Ray Kroc

[On being misled over a deal by the McDonald brothers] I’d been blindfolded by their assurances and let to grind like blind Samson in the prison house.
Ray Kroc

Perfection is very difficult to achieve, and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald’s. Everything else was secondary for me.
Ray Kroc

[On Harry Sonneborn] I had to admire his persistence, and also the resolve he had that he would devote every working minute to McDonald’s – twenty-four hours a day if necessary. I believed him.
Ray Kroc

The company could never have grown as it did without the unique vision of Harry Sonneborn.
Ray Kroc

In my definition, an executive is a person who rarely makes mistakes.
Ray Kroc

It was painfully slow going, like trying to ice skate on bare concrete… but we worked like mad, and in the last eight months of 1956 we opened eight stores, only one of them in California.
Ray Kroc

I’ve always dealt fairly in business, even when I believed someone was trying to take advantage of me. That’s one reason I have had to grind way incessantly to achieve success.
Ray Kroc

In some ways I guess I’m naïve. I always take a man at his word unless he’s given me a reason not to, and I’ve worked out many a satisfactory deal on the strength of a handshake. On the other hand, I’ve been taken to the cleaners often enough to make me a certified cynic.
Ray Kroc



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