Ghost of Ray Kroc

There is a lesson to be taught, and it’s that if you’re a bad person in life, a competing restaurant chain will turn you into a flame grilled hamburger. Through exhaustive research, high pressure tactics, and very creative technologies, we turned McDonald’s founder and industry super villain Ray Kroc into a limited time Burger King menu item for Halloween.

The scientist featured in this video is Ashley Cross. She’s a PHD candidate at Emory University, researching microbiology and genetics. Here is a link to her academic profile on Emory’s site, and her LinkedIn profile in case you have any questions on molecular genetics.

The voice you heard during the phone call was Ray Kroc’s son. His name is Ballard Smith, he’s the former president of the San Diego Padres, but more recently was Executive Director at a non-profit organization called Science of Sport. Below is a video recording of my conversation with the current ED, Daren Heaton. We told him we were doing a project on the Padres and that for research purposes, we needed Ballard’s phone number to ask questions. It took very little convincing for Daren to hand over his personal contact information.

Art Director: Jack Blair

Co-CW: Evan Glass

Packaging Design: Kevin Magarity

Genetics Scientist: Ashley Cross

Ray’s Son-In-Law: Ballard Smith