January 2025 History Friday: McDonald’s

One of the most important relationships in Kraus-Anderson’s history began in 1958 when KA built a restaurant in St. Louis Park for an up-and-coming chain named McDonald’s.

The controversy surrounding this project indicates how different this new type of restaurant was. It might have been the decision of franchisees Jim Zien and Zim Heller to site the restaurant directly across the street from St. Louis Park High School, which parents feared would draw students away from wholesome cafeteria fare. St. Louis Park officials also doubted the business projections. One council member is quoted as saying, “If he serves 1,000 meals a day, I’ll eat the whole building.” One thousand meals a day is a pale reflection of the new fast-service universe that McDonald’s would help create.

The St. Louis Park location was one of the first McDonald’s in Minnesota, and (for reasons that may be lost to history) KA and McDonald’s clicked. Kraus-Anderson became McDonald’s preferred builder for the central United States, building over four hundred locations across seven states.

KA lore has it that Kraus-Anderson executive Bill Jaeger drew a plan for a glass-and-aluminum enclosed seating area that was handed to Ray Kroc in the early 1960s and influenced the design of thousands of McDonald’s restaurants. Although confirmation for such historical details is beyond challenging to confirm, what the historical record does make clear KA and McDonald’s had an incredible working relationship.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the decades-long relationship left KA’s owner/operator, Lloyd Engelsma, with a soft spot for the restaurant chain. Here he is celebrating a birthday.