Business

Ray Kroc was 52, working as a milkshake mixer salesman, when he came across clients Mac and Dick McDonald’s hamburger restaurant in Bernardino, Calif. Amazed their food assembly line delivered fast service, Kroc convinced them to franchise the company with his help. The next year, Kroc opened his first McDonald’s outside of Chicago. In 1961,…

Even if you have never shopped at a Whole Foods Market and observed its cornucopia of organic offerings, you have undoubtedly seen its influence upon the food industry. The world’s largest organic and natural-foods grocer has grown to include more than 270 stores and counting, with more than 53,000 employees. Its success has inspired other…

In 1992, computer entrepreneur Michael Dell was the youngest CEO running a Fortune 500 company. He and his wife, Susan, formed the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in 1999, now with an endowment of more than $1 billion. Dell stepped down as CEO in 2004. But the company’s fi nancial growth and overall customer satisfaction…

Bite into one of Vosges Haut-Chocolat’s Naga truffles. What do you taste? Exotic ingredients like curry and coconut extract? Check. Top-quality milk chocolate? You bet. But there’s another essential element that adds to the complexity of this delicacy: a story. “I came up with the idea of using chocolate as a medium to explore other…