14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s

Jake Rosen and Mental_Floss present 14 Unusual Ways McDonalds Did Business in the ’60s.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THEY DIDN’T HIRE WOMEN.
Fast-service restaurants in the ‘40s and ‘50s were renowned for their carhops—perky young women who delivered trays of food to parked automobiles. But franchise founders Maurice and Richard McDonald held a negative opinion about these jobs: They felt it created an atmosphere where families would be uncomfortable visiting a burger stand populated by obnoxious teen boys ogling employees. They eliminated the carhop position, expecting customers to instead approach windows on foot. Subsequent owner Ray Kroc held firm to the no-women policy: “We don’t hire female help,” he told the Associated Press in 1959. The freeze lasted until franchise operators began insisting on a gender-balanced staff in the mid-to-late-‘60s. Even then, Kroc ruled that female employees be “flat-chested” and not work the grill since they didn’t possess the “stamina” for such intensive labor.

6. THEY DIDN’T WANT BUSINESS FROM DIRTY HOBOS.
Family was a key selling point for McDonald’s. Time and again, spokespeople for the chain reinforced the idea of creating an environment parents would be comfortable in. The companytold press that new locations were scouted based on the number of church steeples, schools and residential streets nearby, not foot traffic. McDonald’s, Kroc said, didn’t want to cater to “transients.”

9. YOU COULDN’T SIT DOWN.
With an average transaction time of just 50 seconds, McDonald’s didn’t really have the time or resources to put into washing dishes. Virtually all locations in the early ‘60s amounted to front counters and drive-in windows: There was no place to sit down inside the restaurant itself until 1962, when a Denver, Colo. location became the first to offer stools.