Why didn’t Ray Krok just start his own burger chain instead of buying out McDonald’s? I never thought the McDonald’s were ambitious enough to challenge him if they expanded, which (afaict) they weren’t all that interested in doing. And it’s not like he was buying a well known name.
Investors and prospective franchisees needed to see the kind of track record and working example that only the McDonald Bros. could provide.
Did the McD brothers ever patent their system? I know they were training others (like Mr Bell) in how to use it for a while.
If they didn’t, I don’t know why Krok didn’t just have a couple of efficiency experts check out their stand, and replicate it elsewhere.
The McDonald brothers had already been franchising restaurants before Kroc; at first they were just franchising the system, but eventually franchised the entire concept. Kroc was a milkshake mixer salesman who had sold the brothers several mixers and was impressed with their operation. He bought into the company with the goal of expanding the franchise business. The McDonald brothers only wanted to run a handful of restaurants, and eventually sold out to Kroc in 1961.
So the answer is most likely simply because it was much easier to buy into a small but established company and expand it than it was to build one from the ground up.
The bottom line is that the McDonalds had to help Kroc make enough money to buy them out. He didn’t have the resources to just create a rip-off of their system from whole cloth.
I don’t have much to add other than the Michael Keaton movie “The Founder”, about Ray Kroc buying out the McDonalds brothers and franchising, is an interesting and entertaining movie. And unlike many “based on a true story” movies, appears to have stuck to the facts pretty well.