Retail History | McDonald's — The Lot at 1398 North E Street

People treat the first McDonald's as Ray Kroc's store in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955.

The name and the system began here, on the southwest corner of 14th Street and E Street in San Bernardino. Richard and Maurice McDonald moved an octagonal stand from Monrovia and opened a barbecue drive-in at this lot on 15 May 1940. The address is 1398 North E Street.

On 12 December 1948 they reopened the same lot as a self-service hamburger bar. The carhops were gone. The menu was cut to a handful of items. A full-page advertisement in the local paper called it the first drive-in hamburger bar in America. That kitchen — not the later franchise architecture — is the Speedee Service System Kroc licensed.

Kroc opened his first franchised store in Des Plaines on 15 April 1955 and bought the brothers out in 1961. The San Bernardino building was torn down in 1971. An unofficial museum now occupies the plot. The Des Plaines replica is a reconstruction of a later store. The first McDonald's was a rebuilt barbecue lot in San Bernardino, not a Midwestern franchise opening.