Burger King

In 1952, Matthew Burns of Long Beach, California, and his stepson, Keith G. Cramer, who owned a drive-in restaurant in Daytona Beach, Florida, visited McDonald’s, a new fast food operation in San Bernardino, California. The two men, impressed by the burger stand’s smooth, efficient operation, acquired the rights to two pieces of equipment used at McDonald’s: George Read’s Miracle Insta-Machine, which made several milkshakes at once, and the Insta-Broiler, which cooked both sides of twelve hamburgers simultaneously and could turn out four hundred burgers in an hour. In 1953, Cramer opened the Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, selling hamburgers for 18 cents apiece. The locals loved them.