Free Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc Page A

enough, however, the Lily Tulip headquarters in New York wanted no part of it. In fact, they complained that they had been getting calls from customers in other parts of the country wanting to know about metal milk shake cup sleeves and “Multiple Mixers” or some such thing, and they declared that they were not about to become jobbers for some mixer maker in the Midwest. They were manufacturers of paper cups, and that is what they intended to remain. I could scarcely believe it. I knew we had barely dented the potential market for Multimixers.
    Earl Prince proposed that I leave Lily Tulip and go into business with him. I would market the inventions he came up with, starting with the Multimixer. I’d be the sole agent for Multimixer in the country. He’d manufacture the things, I’d handle the accounts receivable, and we’d split the profits. It sounded very tempting. I was getting more and more fed up with Lily Tulip. I was about to lose one of my biggest accounts, Walgreens, the people I had created a tremendous amount of business for and to whom I was selling five million cups a year. Fred Stoll told me in strictest confidence that a former Walgreen executive who had a lot of pull in the top offices of the company had gone into the paper cup business with a competitor of mine, and he was going to be given all of the Walgreen trade. The rationale would be that this competitor was selling for five percent under my price. I explained this to John Clark and tried to get him to go along with offering Walgreens a price break—after all, they paid their bills on time and there was promotion value in having a big company like that use your product. But all I got was a tongue lashing. He said I was no longer a salesman; my customers were selling me! I was smoldering after that.
    Ethel was incredulous at the idea that I would give up my position at Lily Tulip and go off on a flyer like this. We had just moved into a fine home in a project named Scarsdale in Arlington Heights, northwest of Chicago. We were extremely comfortable there. Ethel loved it, and she felt threatened by this proposal. “You are risking your whole future if you do this, Ray,” she said. “You are thirty-five years old, and you are going to start all over again as if you were twenty? This Multimixer seems good now, but what if it turns out to be just a fad and fails?”
    â€œYou just have to trust my instincts,” I said. “I am positive this is going to be a winner. Besides, Earl will come up with a lot of other marketable ideas. This is just the beginning. I want you to help me; come down and work in the office for me and together we will make it a terrific business.”
    â€œI will do no such thing.”
    â€œBut Ethel. I need your help. You know I can’t afford to hire someone, and it would be good for you, for both of us. Please?”
    She absolutely refused to help. I’m sure she felt justified, but I felt betrayed. I just couldn’t believe she’d let me down like that. She wouldn’t even agree to work part-time or for a limited period, until I got the business going. That was when I began to understand the meaning of the word estrangement . It is a terrible feeling, and once it appears, it grows like dry rot.
    My disappointment with Ethel did not deter me, though. When I have my mind made up about a business deal, that’s it. I was going to move ahead regardless. However, I had not even considered the kind of problems I would encounter with Mr. John Clark when I tried to extricate myself from Lily Tulip Cup. This time, I closed the door to his office without being told. He looked at me owlishly and said, “Yes?”
    â€œJ.A., I am going to resign. I am going to be the exclusive sales agent for the Multimixer. That’s good for you because it gets me out of your hair, and I am going to sell a hell of a lot of paper cups for you when I start putting Multimixers in