McDonald's introduced its Speedee Service System and hamburger-focused menu in 1948.
Maurice and Richard McDonald closed their San Bernardino drive-in for several months in 1948 and redesigned its operation. They reduced the menu, emphasized hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes, and created a production-line approach intended to make meals quickly and consistently.
The system took its name from Speedee, an early McDonald's mascot represented as a chef. The brothers' methods attracted attention because they treated restaurant work more like an assembly process than a traditional drive-in kitchen.
People sometimes date the beginning of McDonald's to 1940, when the first restaurant opened, or to 1955, when Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. The branding and operating transformation known as the Speedee Service System, however, belongs to 1948.