The first McDonald’s restaurant opened under Ray Kroc’s franchise organization in 1955.
Kroc opened the restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, after becoming involved with Richard and Maurice McDonald’s standardized restaurant concept. The site is widely identified as the first McDonald’s restaurant operated by Kroc’s organization and is now associated with a museum and reconstruction of the original building.
This event marked the beginning of McDonald’s large-scale expansion under Kroc. The McDonald brothers had already opened their first restaurant in San Bernardino in 1940 and had introduced the Speedee Service System in 1948, so 1955 was not the company’s founding date in the broadest historical sense.
The Des Plaines opening is also distinct from the later creation of the modern corporate logo and the introduction of Ronald McDonald. Those branding developments occurred in the early 1960s, after the franchise network had begun growing.