McDonald’s introduced the Speedee Service System in 1948.
Richard and Maurice McDonald redesigned their San Bernardino, California, restaurant around a limited menu, assembly-line preparation, and rapid customer service. The system was named after Speedee, the chef-hat mascot used in the restaurant’s early branding.
This change was a major step in creating the McDonald’s brand associated with consistency and speed. The brothers had opened their original drive-in restaurant in 1940, but the 1948 reorganization established the operating model that later franchisees would reproduce.
The date is sometimes confused with 1955, when Ray Kroc opened the McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, and with 1961, when the company’s training center, Hamburger University, opened. Those events were important, but they did not mark the creation of the Speedee Service System.