Burgers are bigger than McDonald’s, but McDonald’s is also bigger than burgers. In the past five decades, the world’s most successful restaurant chain has come to stand for many things, including the health risks associated with fast food, the effectiveness of mass marketing, the advantages and pitfalls of globalization, and, last but not least, the impact of large-scale philanthropy.
At the same time that chefs of all kinds have liberated burgers from the fast-food category, McDonald’s has kept its Golden Arches profitable by applying its burger technology to proteins other than ground beef. For example, the breakfast sandwich known as the Egg McMuffin, which was invented in Santa Barbara on Milpas Street in 1972 by Herb Peterson, remains a force to be reckoned with, as the 2016 decision to offer breakfast all day at many McDonald’s is credited with putting the company in the black for the first time in years.
Less well-known than the McMuffin, but in many ways just as important for the legacy of McDonald’s, is another Santa Barbara County connection. Ray Kroc, McDonald’s powerhouse leader in the prime years of its expansion, owned a ranch in Santa Ynez and built an elaborate home there on Happy Canyon Road in the late 1960s. In her fascinating 2016 book Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away, Lisa Napoli reveals the pivotal role played by Kroc’s J and R Double Arch Ranch in what would become the supersized philanthropic legacy of the McDonald’s fortune.