McDonald’s Hamburger University was established in 1961 to train the company’s restaurant managers.
The program began at McDonald’s original corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. It was designed to teach restaurant operations, food preparation, service standards, management, and company procedures rather than to function as a conventional academic university.
Hamburger University became a major part of McDonald’s management-development system. As the company expanded internationally, the program developed training facilities and courses serving managers from many countries. Its name is a playful reference to hamburgers, but its subject matter is primarily restaurant leadership and operations.
A frequent confusion concerns its location. The original and best-known U.S. campus was in Oak Brook, while McDonald’s later established a larger modern training center at its global headquarters in Chicago. The institution’s founding date, however, remains 1961.