Photos show what it was really like to eat at McDonald's in the 1950s (2024)

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This is what the very first McDonald's franchise restaurant looked like.

The restaurant's famous red-and-white design was designed by architect Stanley Meston. However, after the McDonald brothers saw the design for the first time, they said that the roof looked too flat. It was then that Meston added the now-iconic golden arches to the building's roof.

The oldest still-operating restaurant featuring the original red-and-white design is located in Downey, California.

Though the McDonald's is no longer in operation, the site was turned into a museum to commemorate what it was like to visit the restaurant in 1955.

Called the "McDonald's No. 1 museum," the site in Des Plaines was created to replicate what it would have been like to visit the McDonald's franchise when it opened, which was a very different experience from what it's like to go to McDonald's today.

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Before drive-thru windows and delivery apps were commonplace at fast-food chains, McDonald's customers would drive into the parking lot and place their orders at the counter.

Instead of the drive-thru model that's popular today, this method of ordering was called "drive-up."

The Speedee Service System that made McDonald's successful was originally based on Henry Ford's assembly-line production of automobiles.

Every McDonald's worker had a specific job, and most of the food was preassembled before customers even ordered, according to History.com. This allowed McDonald's locations to serve their food much faster than their competitors.

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The original menu only had nine items on it.

The original McDonald's menu offered hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, milk, root beer, orangeade, Coca-Cola, coffee, and three kinds of milkshakes: chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla.

In 1949, potato chips were swapped with french fries and McDonald's began selling milkshakes.

When customers placed their orders at the counter, a server would write them down on a ticket like this one.

At the first McDonald's location, every item cost less than 25 cents, and hamburgers were only 15 cents. Burgers could also be purchased by the dozen for large parties.

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Unlike other fast-food restaurants that made their burgers to order, all McDonald's burgers were made the same way and placed under a heat vent ready to serve.

All burgers were pre-made with ketchup, mustard, onions, and two pickles. If you wanted to order your hamburger a different way, you would have to wait just a little bit longer.

When McDonald's first opened, its fries looked and tasted pretty similar to what you'll get today.

The chain marketed its signature shoestring fries as "salty goodness," Fox News reported.

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If you stopped by a McDonald's in 1955, you'd definitely want to pick up one of the chain's Triple Thick Milkshakes, made in what was called a Multimixer.

McDonald's might have looked very different had it not been for the invention of the Multimixer. A Multimixer salesman, McDonald's Corporation founder Ray Kroc first met the McDonald brothers in 1954 while attempting to sell them more Multimixers for their restaurants.

It was then that Kroc introduced the idea of franchising their business and set plans into motion to open his first location.

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Back in 1955, there were no dining rooms or drive-thrus, but McDonald's thrived on its drive-up model.

Whether customers took their burgers on the road or chose to sit in the parking lot, gazing up at the McDonald's sign advertising its 15-cent burgers, the experience started what would eventually lead to the expansion of the No. 1 fast-food chain in the world.

Just over a decade later, there were 1,000 McDonald's locations in the US. Today there are more than 38,000 McDonald's restaurants in more than 100 countries, according to McDonald's.