Fast food as we know it came into being in San Bernardino on Dec. 12, 1948.

That is the date when Richard and Maurice “Mac” McDonald opened the first McDonald’s fast food restaurant at 14th and E streets.

A McDonald’s museum now stands on the site, and it will mark the milestone with a 70th anniversary party on Wednesday, Dec. 12.

“This is not just a local event,” said Ezra Cabral, the museum’s assistant curator. “This is where the Americana concept of fast food and fast service originated. It’s a common identity no matter where you are in this nation. Everyone has eaten at least once at McDonald’s.”

The event will give early McDonald’s employees the chance to revisit the site and reminisce. Among them is Ben Stacks, whose father Cliff worked for the McDonald brothers and was a manager at their first E Street restaurant, a drive-in serving barbecue that opened on May 15, 1940.

Ben Stacks, of Highland, laughs at a photo of himself displayed at the McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. Stacks’ worked at the same McDonald’s location in 1954. (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The McDonald’s Museum is open to the public in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. McDonald’s will be marking a major milestone in its history on Dec. 12 at the original burger joint in San Bernardino. (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

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A display of McDonald’s memorabilia from different states and countries are displayed in the McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. McDonald’s will be marking a major milestone in its history on Dec. 12 at the original burger joint in San Bernardino (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The McDonald’s Museum is open to the public in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. McDonald’s will be marking a major milestone in its history on Dec. 12 at the original burger joint in San Bernardino. (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The McDonald’s Museum is open to the public in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. McDonald’s will be marking a major milestone in its history on Dec. 12 at the original burger joint in San Bernardino. (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)



Ben Stacks, of Highland, looks around the McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino on Friday, November 30, 2018. Stacks’ worked at the same McDonald’s location in 1954. (Photo by Stan Lim, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

“My dad was the one who cooked the barbecued beef in a big pit back there and had a bucket of barbecue sauce, and he would spread it with like a floor mop,” said Stacks, of Highland, on a recent visit to the museum. “He told me, and I believed it for years, that the same mop was what they did the floors with at night.”

The brothers loaned Stacks’ parents $250 for a down payment on a house near Tippecanoe Avenue and Baseline Street in 1943.

“Mac was the nicer of the two,” Stacks said. “They were both friendly, but Mac always had a smile and joke.”

The McDonald brothers came to California from New Hampshire as young men in the 1930s and managed a movie theater in Glendora and a hot dog stand in Monrovia before coming to San Bernardino.

The barbecue restaurant provided full service with carhops taking orders and delivering food to people’s vehicles. Interested in cutting costs and increasing efficiency, the brothers closed it in 1948, got rid of the carhops and the barbecue pit, and remodeled the building to serve customers from two walk-up windows. Reopening by the end of the year, they launched what they would call the Speedee Service System. It had a short menu, mainly hamburgers and milkshakes, and an assembly line for preparing them.

Speedee, a smiling hamburger, was McDonald’s mascot long before redheaded clown Ronald McDonald. The museum has a photo of Ben Stacks in a McDonald’s uniform that included a black bolo tie with a Speedee clasp.

Ben Stacks, who was born in 1941, started working for the restaurant in the summer of 1954. His first duty was “lot boy,” sweeping the parking lot. Then he advanced to the milkshake station, scooping ice milk into cups that went into a freezer until they were needed for an order. Then they were shoved into a mixer with multiple spindles.

That’s how he met Ray Kroc, who was a Midwest-based appliance vendor. Stacks said the mixers had a rubber belt that wore out quickly and that Kroc delivered replacement belts in person.

The story of how Kroc befriended the McDonald brothers, acquired their business and fell out with them is told in the 2016 biopic “The Founder,” with Michael Keaton as Kroc. The film begins in 1954 and depicts the San Bernardino restaurant but was filmed in Georgia.

“It looked like nothing here,” Stacks said. “Absolutely, 100 percent wrong. I and other friends who grew up here laughed at it.”

Otherwise, he thought the film was accurate. He said he saw it once, and that was enough.

The building that housed the brothers’ restaurant is long gone. They wouldn’t turn it over to Kroc and in the early 1960s he opened a McDonald’s restaurant across the street. The brothers turned theirs into “Big M,” Stacks said, and kept it open for the sake of their older employees, people like Cliff Stacks. It was bulldozed in 1971 and replaced with a music store owned by the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera Association.

In 1998, it was acquired by Albert Okura, founder of Juan Pollo, a chain that serves rotisserie chicken in 25 restaurants throughout Southern California.

Okura said he opened the museum out of his admiration for Kroc. The building is also the site of Juan Pollo’s corporate headquarters. Although the McDonald’s corporation supplied the Civic Light Opera with plaques for the property, the museum calls itself unofficial. Its collection of photos and memorabilia is largely donated by individuals.

It has a display case devoted to “The Founder” with costumes and props such as hamburger wrappers from the movie.

Stacks said they look authentic, with one exception. A dull green milkshake mixer is the wrong color. He said it should be stainless steel.

Original McDonald’s Museum

Where: 1398 N E. St., San Bernardino.

Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Donations accepted.

Anniversary party: Wednesday, Dec. 12. Festivities will include refreshments and a raffle for a McDonald’s uniform shirt used in the film “The Founder” at 2 p.m.

Information: 909-885-6324