History : McDonald's in Malaysia

McDonald's first made its way to our shores in December 1980 when McDonald's Corporation, USA gave GOLDEN ARCHES RESTAURANTS SDN BHD the license to operate McDonald's restaurants in Malaysia.

We in Malaysia got our first taste of McDonald's when McDonald's Malaysia opened its first restaurant at Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur on 29 April 1982.

To date, McDonald's Malaysia has 194 restaurants located nationwide and is currently expanding at about 10-15 restaurants annually.

McDonald's has created many job opportunities in Malaysia. McDonald's Malaysia employs more than 8,000 local people with 120 support staff at its headquarters managing the day-to-day operations of the McDonald's business. There is also a regional office in Penang and Johor Bahru.

Ray Kroc was the exclusive distributor of a milk shake maker called the Multimixer. Meanwhile, two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald owned and ran a hamburger restaurant in San Bernadino, California, in the 1950s. Ray Kroc heard how well the McDonald brothers were doing using his Multimixers to serve their customers. He met up with them and acquired the franchising right from them to run McDonald's restaurants.

A great success story was in the making. In 1955, Ray Kroc founded the McDonald's Corporation and opened the first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. In 1961, he bought out the McDonald brothers.

And the rest, as they say, is history. McDonald's grew into the largest restaurant organisation in the world. Today, there are more than 30,000 McDonald's restaurants serving 47 million customers each day in over 100 countries. Ray Kroc died in 1984 but his legacy is very much alive. His success story continues with McDonald's families of employees, franchisees and suppliers. His commitment, dedication and achievements continue to live on at McDonald's restaurants across the world.