In October 1948, after the McDonald brothers realized that most of their profits came from selling hamburgers, they closed down their successful carhop drive-in to establish a streamlined system with a simple menu of just hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, shakes, soft drinks, and apple pie. The carhops were eliminated to make McDonald's a self-serve operation. Mac and Dick McDonald had taken great care in setting up their kitchen like an assembly line to ensure maximum efficiency. The restaurant's name was again changed, this time to simply "McDonald's," and reopened its doors on December 12, 1948.
In 1953, the McDonald brothers began to franchise their successful restaurant, starting in Phoenix, Arizona and Downey, California; the latter is today the oldest surviving McDonald's restaurant. The McDonald brothers created Speedee to symbolize the quick and efficient service system that they had devised. Downey's Speedee is one of only a few remaining. His little legs, animated in neon, still run as fast as they can to serve the restaurant's next customer. The Speedee sign was erected in 1959 at Downey with its single giant arch and is a one-of-a-kind. It also hearkens back to the days of the postwar era when the roadside was filled with larger than life advertisements of all shapes and colors vying for motorists' attention: "Hey pull in over here, This is Your Kind of Place!" Designed by the architect Stanley Clarke Meston and his assistant Charles Fish, Downey's restaurant is the oldest operating McDonald's in the world. Since it was franchised not by the McDonald's Corporation, but by the McDonald brothers themselves to Roger Williams and Burdette Landon, the Speedee McDonald's