Richard and Maurice McDonald

Richard and Maurice McDonald built the product. In 1948, running a profitable drive-in in San Bernardino, they did something almost nobody does: they closed a business that was working in order to rebuild it. They cut the menu from twenty-five items to nine, eliminated carhops, plates and cutlery, and redesigned the kitchen as a fixed-station assembly line — chalking the layout full-size on a tennis court and walking imaginary orders through it until the movements were minimal. The Speedee Service System let them sell a 15-cent hamburger at speed and volume, and the entire fast-food industry is a derivative of it.

What they did not build was an appetite for expansion. They franchised a handful of locations, found the quality control impossible to police from California, and were content with the income. When Ray Kroc arrived in 1954 asking for national rights, they gave them to him because they did not want the work.

In 1961 they sold everything — the system, the name, the process — for $2.7 million, roughly $1 million each after tax. Richard McDonald later said the handshake agreement on an ongoing royalty was never honoured; there is no contractual record of it. They also lost the right to their own name on their original restaurant, renamed it The Big M, and watched Kroc open a McDonald's nearby that helped close it. The brothers were satisfied with the outcome at the time and less satisfied later. Both readings are in the record, and the case is more useful if you hold them together.