Free Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc Page B

stores all over the country.”
    â€œYou can’t do that, Ray,” he said, as if he were talking to a child and patiently explaining some important but obvious thing. You do not have the Multimixer contract. Sanitary Cup and Service Corporation has it.”
    â€œWell, what the hell, you can give it up. You’ve told me repeatedly that you are not going to get into Multimixer sales yourselves. And you know that what I said is true: I am going to sell a good many million paper cups for you.”
    â€œYou don’t understand. The Coue brothers would never give it up. You don’t know how they operate.”
    â€œListen, they have to!” I brought this thing in here in the first place out of loyalty to you and to the Coues and the company. I didn’t have to do that. If you were using it, that would be one thing, but the company doesn’t want it. Give it back to me. You can’t put a thing like this on the shelf, it won’t sit there, it’s too big!”
    I was controlling myself as well as I could, but Clark could see that I was getting ready to blow a gasket, so he said, “Well, let me talk to them and see what we can work out.”
    What he worked out was a deal in which I got the Multimixer contract, and Sanitary Cup got sixty percent of my new company, which I named Prince Castle Sales. It was a satanic setup, but I didn’t see that then. It was the only way out, it seemed, and I had to take it. And, at any rate, the corporation would put up $6,000 of the $10,000 capital I needed to get started, so it didn’t seem such a big handicap. But it was soon to become an anchor chained around my neck.

 
    5
    There’s almost nothing you can’t accomplish if you set your mind to it.
    I told that to a group of graduate students at Dartmouth College in March 1976. They had asked me to address them on the art of entrepreneurship—how to pioneer a business venture. “You’re not going to get it free,” I said, “and you have to take risks. I don’t mean to be a daredevil, that’s crazy. But you have to take risks, and in some cases you must go for broke. If you believe in something, you’ve got to be in it to the ends of your toes. Taking reasonable risks is part of the challenge. It’s the fun.”
    I was having a lot of fun back in early 1938 when I struck off on my own with a brand-new Multimixer in a big sample case and the whole nation of soda fountain operators and restaurant owners quivering in anticipation for this product. At least I thought they were. It didn’t take long for me to discover how wrong I was on that score.
    A fellow who already had six single-spindle machines would look down his nose at my gleaming, thirty-pound metal mushroom and tell me that he couldn’t see putting all his drinks on one mixer. If it burned out, he’d be out of business until it could be repaired. With six individual machines, on the other hand, chances of all of them burning out at once were slim. And even with three or five of them out of commission, he’d still be able to make a malt. That point of view was a mighty tough one to change. I butted heads with a lot of flinty operators. Some of them I was able to convince, others never saw the light. But there was enough evidence of interest to maintain my faith in the product. I believed it would be successful.
    I was a one-man marching band. I had a tiny office in the LaSalle-Wacker Building in Chicago, but I was seldom there. My secretary ran the office while I traveled all over the country. Sales were not bad, considering the newness of the product. I could feel it beginning to catch on. But I was extremely unhappy with my financial setup. As sixty-percent partner, Sanitary Cup was able to restrict my salary, and John Clark kept it at the same level I’d been at when I left Lily Tulip Cup. I determined after a little over two years that I was going to have to get