Jeff Bezos went from earning $3/hr flipping burgers at Miami McDonald's to spending $6,000/hr on a $500,000,000 yacht
Published on Nov 11, 2025 at 3:19 PM (UTC+4)
by Daisy Edwards
Last updated on Nov 11, 2025 at 9:20 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
Jeff Bezos went from flipping burgers for $3 an hour at a Miami McDonald’s to spending $6,000 an hour cruising the world on a $500 million superyacht.
The billionaire founder of Amazon wasn’t always surrounded by luxury, he had humble beginnings like the rest of us mere mortals.
As a teen, he was frying eggs at a greasy grill, not sipping champagne on the deck of Koru.
Here’s how the world’s richest man turned the golden arches into golden piles of money and created pure superyacht splendor.
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From flipping burgers at McDonald’s to champagne on a yacht
Long before he built Amazon or bought his spectacular superyacht, Bezos worked the breakfast rush at McDonald’s in Miami, earning just $3 an hour.
He wasn’t allowed on the register because his teenage acne kept him in the kitchen, so he learned the rhythm of cooking hundreds of eggs for McMuffins with precision.
He later said that the job at Maccies taught him everything about systems, process, and efficiency, which is ironically, the same engineering mindset that powered his empire decades later.
It’s the kind of discipline that turned frying eggs into hatching a billion-dollar idea.
Big Mac on deck
Today, Jeff Bezos owns and commands Koru, a 416-foot sailing yacht worth roughly $500 million, along with a $75 million support vessel named Abeona for his wife, Lauren Sánchez.
Operating costs are eye-watering, about $6,000 every single hour, or $50 to $60 million a year just to keep the ship running and shipshape.
With polished wood decks, three towering masts, and a crew ready to serve at sea, Koru is a million miles away from that greasy McDonald’s kitchen.
It’s proof that Bezos’s real skill wasn’t flipping burgers, it was learning how to flip fate and master the art of business.
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As a Content Writer since January 2025, Daisy’s focus is on writing stories on topics spanning the entirety of the website. As well as writing about EVs, the history of cars, tech, and celebrities, Daisy is always the first to pitch the seed of an idea to the audience editor team, who collab with her to transform it into a fully informative and engaging story.
