Ray Kroc Character Analysis in Fast Food Nation

The first CEO of what would become the McDonald’s Corporation of franchises, Ray Kroc expanded the company into its current global behemoth—the Golden Arches. The McDonald’s headquarters, in Illinois, has a Ray Kroc Museum, describing, in part, Kroc’s relationship with other major corporate executives of the immediate post-war period, including Walt Disney.

Ray Kroc Quotes in Fast Food Nation

The Fast Food Nation quotes below are all either spoken by Ray Kroc or refer to Ray Kroc. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Diet, Nutrition, and Food Safety Theme Icon

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Mariner edition of Fast Food Nation published in 2012.

This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ‘em, and I’m going to kill ‘em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.

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Page Number and Citation: 37

Explanation and Analysis:

Ray Kroc Character Timeline in Fast Food Nation

The timeline below shows where the character Ray Kroc appears in Fast Food Nation. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...IL, where he goes to the McStore—an enormous gift shop for the company—and the Ray Kroc Museum. Schlosser is impressed and slightly confused by the overwhelming amount of McDonald’s merchandise for... (full context)

Both Kroc and Disney were self-educated, and their training facilities they christened “universities,” to make employees at... (full context)

Schlosser notes that, after purchasing McDonald’s franchising rights, Kroc sent a letter to Disney, then already quite famous as head of the Disney movie... (full context)

...quality, of a machine producing something customers, especially children, might want, was deeply influential for Kroc, who imagined the McDonald’s Speedee Service System nationwide, as a blueprint for the efficient production... (full context)

...the United States, was, for example, part of the Disneyland opening ceremony. Schlosser argues that Kroc’s politics were harder to trace, since Kroc tended not to get involved in national political... (full context)

...“progress,” not unlike Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr. In particular, Disney’s progress, like Kroc’s, involved an America that looked more suburban, and required families to drive on major interstate... (full context)

Kroc also believed in this kind of progress. He tried, for a time, to plan a... (full context)

...Disney’s theme parks,” Schlosser notes, stating that “the life’s work of Walt Disney and Ray Kroc had come full-circle.” (full context)

...tail end of the 19th century, it was really the fast food industry, and Ray Kroc in particular, who pioneered and perfected the idea. Many fast-food companies, like McDonald’s, now make... (full context)

Schlosser notes that Ray Kroc encouraged “tenacity” and “competitiveness” among his early franchisees in the 1960s and ‘70s, and he... (full context)

...Simplot “began selling frozen, pre-cut french fries” directly to consumers, and by the 1960s, Ray Kroc began buying Simplot’s frozen fries, since they tasted nearly similar to the fresh-cut variety in... (full context)