Free Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc

this guy a lesson! I’m going to sell it for twelve cents in our first store and let him watch the thing fall on its face. Then, when we get it perfected, we can go into all the stores and sell it for a dime.” Walter didn’t answer. I think I’d worn them out.
    The record books of Prince Castles show that they did indeed start selling the “One-in-a-Million” at twelve cents. They never reduced the price. It took off like a barn fire. Earl Prince was not unhappy that he failed to teach me a lesson, either. I sold him five million sixteen-ounce cups that first year, so by adding on the two cents as I insisted, he made an extra $100,000.
    That kind of volume made Earl Prince’s creative juices start flowing. Prince Castle mixed shakes ahead and kept the sinks full of metal containers being rinsed. During busy periods, it was almost impossible to keep up with the demand for metal cans. Earl invented a collar made from the upper half of a metal shake can. The cylinder had been compressed or tapered at the bottom, and he took a sixteen-ounce paper cup and fitted the metal ring on top of it. The tapered part extended down into the paper cup like a sleeve. The upper portion sat on the rim of the cup, extending up to make the whole thing exactly the same height as a regular metal can—six and seven-eighths inches. He demonstrated it to me by putting together a “One-in-a-Million” shake in a paper cup with the metal collar and stuck it on the mixer. It worked!
    I needed no further demonstration. It all fell into place in my mind. It was sensational for sure. Not many days later, we had a supply of metal sleeves at the Lily Tulip office in Chicago, and I demonstrated the idea for John Clark and the other company executives. They loved it, especially when I showed them how I intended to merchandise it to owners of dairy bars and soda fountains. I would go into a place and explain how I could save them some money with these metal sleeves for their Lily Tulip cups. I would buy ten milk shakes—ten metal cans full—and pour them out for people as I talked about how tasty and refreshing and wholesome this drink was. I’d make the waitress leave the metal cans standing on the counter while we finished off our drinks. All this time, of course, the residue was melting in the metal cans. When we finished, I’d grab a sixteen-ounce cup from my sample case and proceed to drain each metal can into it. The result was another full cup of milk shake! In practice that rarely failed to convince the owner. From then on, he used metal sleeves, and Lily Tulip cups—no more metal cans.
    This new method stepped up Prince Castles’ sales volume so much that their single-spindle Hamilton Beach mixers could no longer handle it. The “One-in-a-Million” was a heavier drink to begin with, and when the mixers were run continuously they simply burned out. That situation is what inspired Earl Prince to invent the Multimixer. At first this machine had six spindles arranged around the central pedestal stand and the top could be rotated to take the drinks off. But that resulted in too many dropped drinks and other minor disasters, so the top was made stationary and the spindles reduced to five. This machine was powered by a one-third horsepower, industrial-type electric motor with direct drive. There were no carbon brushes to wear out. You could mix concrete with the damn thing if you had to. This was the invention that really made big volume milk shake production possible, and it changed the course of my life.
    After Earl had the Multimixer in production, I took one of the machines down to the Lily Tulip office and held another demonstration. John Clark was knocked cold by it, and we got busy and signed a contract that made Sanitary Cup and Service Corporation the exclusive distributor of the Multimixer. I felt like Lindbergh and Admiral Perry all rolled into one—a real hero.
    Strangely