[originaltext] Richard and Maurice McDonald, the original owner of McDonald’

Richard and Maurice McDonald, the original owner of McDonald’s, opened their first self-service restaurant in San Bernadino, California. People would come from everywhere to buy their French fries and hamburgers. Workers would buy their lunches at McDonald’s because the hamburgers and French fries tasted better than their lunches from home.
    By 1960, the McDonald brothers owned 228 self-service restaurants. Then, in 1960, Ray Kroc, a 56-year-old salesman, bought the name and most of the restaurants for 2.7 million dollars.  He then began to build new restaurants, and, by 1982, he owned about 7,063 of those restaurants, about 1,283 were in other countries: Japan, West Germany, England, and Australia. That same year, McDonald’s Corporation earned about 7 million dollars.
    McDonald’s is a big business, but it is not too big or too rich to help ordinary people.  For example, owners of restaurants participate in special community programs for children or senior citizens.
    The corporation owns special houses near children’s hospitals.  These Ronald McDonald houses are for sick children and their parents. Sometimes a child has to go at a hospital for several weeks or months.  Then the child’s parents can stay at a Ronald McDonald house. Staying at these houses is cheaper than staying at hotels, and the atmosphere is friendlier and more homelike.