What was McDonald’s restaurant called before it became simply McDonald’s in 1948?

Before becoming simply McDonald’s in 1948, the restaurant was called McDonald’s Bar-B-Q.

Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their first restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in 1940. It was a drive-in barbecue restaurant with a broad menu and carhop service, reflecting the dominant Southern California restaurant format of the period. The Bar-B-Q name described that original business model.

In 1948, the brothers temporarily closed the restaurant and reorganized it around a much smaller menu and faster production system. When it reopened, it focused on hamburgers, cheeseburgers, milkshakes, soft drinks, and fries. The change accompanied the introduction of the Speedee Service System and the shorter McDonald’s name.

The name is often confused with the later corporate identity created under Ray Kroc’s leadership. Kroc did not found the original San Bernardino restaurant; he became the brothers’ franchising partner in the 1950s. The 1948 renaming therefore belongs to the brothers’ own transition from a drive-in barbecue business to a streamlined hamburger restaurant.