All about location

Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, is famous for having said that he was in the real estate business, not the hamburger business.

The truth of that statement is evident when you consider his first real estate deal in Florida. The year was 1958 and many of the details are lost to history, but it's likely that Kroc personally approved the company's first Florida land deal on Cleveland Avenue in Fort Myers. “He probably came here with [business partner] Fred Turner,” says Deana Homsi, owner and operator of D&T of Fort Myers, the company that owns and operates the restaurant on the same site today.

Kroc started McDonald's in 1955 and by 1958 it had sold its 100 millionth burger. While the first McDonald's restaurant in Florida was built in Tampa, Fort Myers was the company's first land deal in the Sunshine State. “Most stores were corporate stores, originally,” Homsi says.