The Once But Not Future Burger

摘要

There once was a time when McDonald's was just a restaurant. "Billions" weren't part of the brand or the plan or the problem. It was 75 years ago that Dick and Mac McDonald first opened McDonald's Bar-B-Q, a drive-in with waitresses known as carhops and menu items ranging from tamales to peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, in San Bernardino, Calif., a town on the outer fringes of the great sprawl emanating from Los Angeles. Such drive-ins were hot in Southern California in those car-crazed days, and McDonald's was an instant hit: Its parking lot was full till late at night. But the McDonald brothers grew frustrated with how long their largely teenage clientele stayed parked, how many plates and glasses they broke, and how big a staff it took to serve them, so in 1948 they shut down for a couple of months to reen-gineer the business.