Now show wages.
When the McDonald brothers opened their original drive-in (and later revamped it into
their speedy self-service hamburger stand in 1948), federal labor standards were vastly different.
The federal minimum wage established by the Fair Labor Standards Act was just
40 cents per hour in the mid-1940s, and increased to 75 cents per hour by January 1950.
Because the first location focused on extreme volume and low cost—selling famous 15-cent hamburgers, 10-cent fries, and 20-cent shakes————
labor costs relied heavily on streamlined assembly-line processes rather than a large crew of hourly waged car-hops.