Locals may know Edward R. Potts as an Alachua City Commissioner and a retired Edward Jones financial advisor.  

What many do not know is that Potts started his career working at McDonald’s—as a great-nephew of Ray Kroc, the man who built the fast food empire that today has more than 40,000 stores. Kroc, whose story was portrayed in the 2016 movie “The Founder,” died 40 years ago this month.  

Potts, vice chair of the Ronald McDonald House of North Central Florida board, recently sat down to talk about the McDonald’s story and his family’s history. The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.  

Exactly how are you related to Ray Kroc?  
My grandmother is Lorraine Kroc, the youngest of the three Kroc kids. Ray was the oldest, then my uncle Bob. My grandma was nine years younger than Ray. 

How old were you when you realized who your great uncle was? 
I was born at McDonald’s. There’s a picture of me standing on the counter at McDonald’s as a toddler with a paper hat, because my parents opened the first store in West Lafayette (Indiana) in 1958, before I was born in 1960. My dad was running the store and everybody on my mom’s side of the family worked for McDonald’s. It was an “all in” thing. 

When my grandfather left Kraft Foods in Chicago, he came to West Lafayette. They chose that location simply because my mom was going to Purdue and he thought, hey, it’s college town, it would be good location. They really didn’t know anybody there, so it was family—my mom, her two sisters, their husbands, my dad. Everybody worked at McDonald’s.  

What number store was that?  
No. 52. I always knew it was it was in the first 100, but then my grandma gave me these Dictaphone tapes between Ray and the McDonald’s brothers that have all the conversations they had. I wanted to know if there was a mention of my grandparents’ store. And at one point he’s talking to the McDonald’s brothers about locations that are opening, and he said, “Yeah, next week, we’ve got store opening in West Lafayette. My sister and her husband, Hank and Lorraine Groh, are opening a store, and we think it’s going to be a fantastic location.” And the store went to No. 1 from the get go. 

A lot of people have probably seen “The Founder” and the way it depicts Kroc’s relationship with the McDonald’s brothers. What does the movie get right about their interactions?  
The initial visit and his infatuation with their system and his immediate desire and request of them to franchise, that is very accurate. It wasn’t something that happened over weeks and weeks. He couldn’t understand why anybody needed that many multi mixers—the five-spindle machines—and they wanted eight of them. He actually flew out to California. He didn’t drive out. But the story from that standpoint is very accurate. 

Where does it get the story wrong?  
The primary discrepancy is the discussion of royalties and the appearance at the end that they thought they were getting royalties. In the movie, Kroc tells them they’re going to get royalties, but they’ll have to do it on a handshake deal. But there were never royalties. Based on discussions I had with my grandfather, the real reason Kroc bought them out was to avoid paying royalties. He just wanted to be able to move forward faster with the franchising. He knew he had hit a home run. And he’s got franchisees lined up, and the McDonald’s brothers have to approve any change from the original plan— including HVAC changes. When you’re talking about a California store and a store above the snow belt in Minnesota, of course it’s going to have to be changed. They were slowing down his ability to move things forward, so he wanted to buy them out.  

So it didn’t have anything to do with milkshake packets?  
That was completely fabricated. That was a way to try to make Joan, his future wife, more involved in the story, because you can tell there was a relationship. And there was. Ray had an affair with her for years. But she wasn’t going to leave her husband until he completely solidified his financial situation. So the milkshake idea in the movie—there was nothing like that. They did not get rid of milkshakes. 

But the HVAC discussions really happened? 
Right. Some things Ray thought were just common sense, and they would say, well, let us think about it, and then we’ll get back with you. That drove him nuts, because he’s trying to move things along.  

I’ve seen people say he cheated the McDonald’s brothers out of the real estate, but people were buying their own land. Kroc was selling the rights to the McDonald’s system, so land had nothing to do with it. When he met Harry Sonneborn and they started buying the land and creating a lease, that became the only option for franchisees.  

That’s what created his income stream, but it wasn’t completely in place when he bought out the McDonald’s brothers. Harry Sonneborn helped him negotiate a deal with some life insurance companies, John Hancock being one. That’s where he got the money. It wasn’t from banks. It came from life insurance companies and vendors like Perlman Rocque and Martin Brower that were smart enough to invest and support him. They are still doing business with McDonald’s today.  

Speaking of loans, I believe your grandparents once asked Kroc for one?  
Yeah, the store that my grandpa had, I mentioned it was the No. 1 store and was a phenomenal location. But the Wabash River flooded, and this is just a year into the business. They had sold their house and literally took every bit of money they had to make this work. They did not have flood insurance because it’s an area prone to flooding and companies wouldn’t sell it to them.  

They had to shut the store down, and they’re saying it’s going to take two weeks to get back up and running. My grandfather calls Kroc, and certainly you can make a pretty good business case for a loan—a very short-term loan. We’re just going to get the store up and running and go right back to being No. 1. Not even using the family side of it—this is Ray’s sister. But he says, no, I’m not going to loan the money to you, but I’ll buy the store back from you. He knew it was a great store.  

My grandpa said, “What are you talking about? I’m not selling you the store.” My grandpa goes to the bank and it’s his fraternity brother—roommate in his fraternity—from the University of Illinois, who is the bank president. So he loaned him the money, and my mom said the store went right back to No. 1, but for a month or two it was just family working at the store. At some point, grandpa made sure everybody got paid for every hour they worked, with a bonus, but after that, his relationship with Kroc never really got better.  

What do you think is Kroc’s most lasting legacy?  
I think just the fact that he’s still relevant. If you listen to a McDonald’s investor day or listen to a stockholders meeting, they’ll quote Ray Kroc four or five times. Before “The Founder,” Ray Kroc was a Jeopardy question. “The Founder” put him back in the headlines. When we went and saw it, I told my wife, “In the beginning, if it’s accurate, you’re going to cheer for him, and by the end, you’re going to be disgusted.” From that standpoint, it’s accurate. He did step on some people.  

You’ve pointed out that he also created wealth for a lot of people. 
Kroc created an opportunity. And I think it’s vastly understated the number of minority millionaires McDonald’s has created because of the way in which the company did franchises. Ray Kroc, Fred Turner and the executive team realized that an operator who lives in a community is probably going to do a better job running a store in that community. So they had incentive programs for minority business owners in those communities.  

Many, many, many people have benefited—not just franchisees, but long-term employees who bought stock, vendors who were invested in McDonald’s from the very beginning, vendors who were smart enough to buy stock in McDonald’s. Early investors in McDonald’s—after that stock split and split and split—they’re incredibly wealthy.