Ray Kroc opened McDonald’s first franchised restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955.
Kroc was a milkshake-mixer salesman who encountered the McDonald brothers’ busy San Bernardino restaurant in 1954. He saw that their standardized kitchen system could support a much larger chain. Kroc became the brothers’ national franchise agent and opened the Des Plaines location on April 15, 1955.
The restaurant was not the first McDonald’s restaurant overall. The brothers had opened their original restaurant in San Bernardino in 1940, and the first modern McDonald’s restaurant using their streamlined service model opened there in 1948. Kroc’s Des Plaines site was important because it became the prototype for the expanding McDonald’s franchise system.
The location also helped establish the visual and operating consistency that later became central to McDonald’s branding. The original building was eventually demolished, but a reconstructed museum operated at the site for many years.