Ray Kroc

The McDonald's system. Kroc, a milkshake-mixer salesman, signed a franchising deal with Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1954, enforced their fast, standardised kitchen across outlets, and later bought them out. He insisted on uniform quality, ran training at Hamburger University, and sold franchises one at a time to owner-operators rather than whole territories. His treatment of the McDonald brothers remains a sore point in the story.