A HUNDRED BILLION HAMBURGERS

Once upon a time, a businessman named Ray Kroc discovered a restaurant owned by two brothers. The restaurant served just four things: hamburgers, *French fries, milk shakes and coca cola. But it was clean and inexpensive, and the service was quick. Mr Kroc liked it so much that he paid the brothers so that he could use their idea and their name: Mc Donald's

Beef, big business and fast service were the ingredients when Mr Kroc opened his first Mc Donald's in 1955. Four years later, there were 100 of them. Kroc knew Americans liked success. So he put *signs saying how many millions of Mc Donald's hamburgers people had bought. In just four years, the number was one hundred million. Now, there are more than 13,000 Mc Donald's restaurants from Dallas to Paris and from Moscow to Beijing.

Anyone who wants to open a Mc Donald's must first work in one for a week. Then, they do a nine-month training programme, in the restaurants and at "Mc Donald's University" in Chicago. There they learn the Mc Donald's philosophy: quality control, service, *cleanliness and cheap prices. Mc Donald's' has strict rules, Hamburgers must be served before they are ten minutes old, and French fries, seven.

Mc Donald's has never stopped looking for new methods to attract customers, from drive-in windows to birthday parties. Chicken, fish, salad and, in some places, pizza are now on the menu. Mc Donald's in Holland even sells a vegetarian burger.
Their international popularity shows they have found the *recipe for success.

VOCABULARY

French fries = des frites

signs = des panneaux

cleanliness = propreté

recipe = recette

QUESTIONS

A) Who is Ray Kroc?

1) the founder of Mc Donald's

2) the brother of the man who built the first Mc Donald's

3) Mc Donald's 1,000,000th customer

B) When was the first Mc Donald's built?

1) about twenty years ago

2) about forty years ago

3) about fifty years ago

C) Where is Mc Donald's University?

1) in New York

2) in Washington

3) in Chicago

ANSWERS

A1 | B3 | C32