New Ingredients for McDonald's

From a distance, the new McDonald's restaurant on Ben Hill Griffin Parkway looks a lot like any other McDonald's. Same iconic, red-gabled roof accented with white and yellow. Same ubiquitous drive-through lane ringing the building. Same steady flow of diners exiting with sacks of Big Macs, fries and apple pies.

But on closer examination, it becomes clear this isn't your typical Mickey D's.

The roof doesn't have the usual fire-engine-red shingles; instead, it's covered with Spanish-influenced barrel tiles in a subdued terra-cotta color. The drive-through unexpectedly splits in two, channeling vehicles to two separate ordering stations. Inside, the typical two-top tables and four-top booths have given way to a multitude of seating choices: a booth for six here, a table for eight there, a cozy leather armchair for one, complete with a swivel desk attached.

Unlike the standard décor to which most McDonald's restaurants have traditionally adhered, this new location is filled with metallic accents, pendant lighting and, perhaps most noteworthy, sports photographs and the Eagles logo of nearby Florida Gulf Coast University.

"It looks good. It's very comfortable," says Bernard Davis, a recent FGCU graduate who works on campus. "It feels good that they're trying to cater to us and show everyone that they support [the university]."

It's a new day for the 52-year-old chain. Diners are less likely to find one of the restaurants with the predictably uniform décor of yesterday. Instead, the corporation and its thousands of franchisees are trying to fit their locations' designs and décor to the communities and people they serve.

Forever Young

In the past year, frequent McDonald's customers have likely noticed their favorite haunt getting a makeover. "Re-imaging" is the word those in McDonald-land use, and the most prominent new style is called "forever young."

"We look at 'forever young' as how we remain relevant to our customers-not only the customers we are serving today, but the customers we are going to serve for the next 52 years," says Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald's USA. "It's showing our customers that we can be modern, dynamic and fun, while keeping the basic principles that made us the iconic brand we are today."

In other words: same burgers, fries and shakes you love, but in a hip, young, stylish environment.

The Ben Hill Griffin store is a textbook example. Situated near a growing university and the new Gulf Coast Town Center, the restaurant features many of the basic "forever young" precepts:

• The double drive-through lane is supposed to speed up the process of ordering, paying for and picking up your food.
• The restaurant is a hot spot, meaning it offers wireless Internet access. It's one of at least 8,500 McDonald's locations in the United States that have added this feature in recent years.
• The seating inside is divided into three distinct zones: fast, linger and social. The fast-zone tables are near the counter, so people can sit, eat quickly and be on their way. The linger zone includes leather chairs with desks and booths, and benches with larger tables. Imagine students splayed, computers humming. The social zone includes large tables with up to eight chairs that can be moved around rather than the old bolted-down furnishings. These are meant to encourage groups to gather and meet over coffee or lunch.
• A wide variety of fabrics and relaxing earth tones are used in the décor-a far cry from the bright, primary colors and plastic-heavy McDonald's interiors of old.
• The restaurant features a bulletin board with announcements from area groups, including sports schedules for FGCU teams. Action shots of FGCU athletes adorn the walls and many of the tabletops are emblazoned with the Eagles logo.

"As McDonald's operators, we're very involved in our community," says Tom Fewster Jr., who owns the Ben Hill Griffin location and owns or co-owns nine others around Lee County. "We want to try and match the restaurant to the people that come in on a daily basis to make them more comfortable."

To this end, Fewster has taken a North Fort Myers location with a slightly older clientele and added dark woods, rich fabrics and more stainless steel to give the restaurant a bit more luxurious feel. At a Cape Coral McDonald's, where his clientele skews younger, Fewster went with bright colors and unique art to give it a bold and more youthful feel.

"We have left the cookie-cutter approach behind, and have tried to put some personality into the restaurants," he says.

Theme Restaurants

Mike Adams has been in the McDonald's business in Southwest Florida for more than 30 years. He and business partner Tom O'Reilly are the area's largest operators, with 16 locations in Collier County and four in Lee County. So far, four of their locations have been re-imaged as "forever young" with more in the works.

"Back in the 1980s, when you went into a lot of restaurants, the décor was just oak, oak, oak. Oak is OK, but that looks dated," Adams says. "[Forever young] is contemporary-somewhat European-with the thought that McDonald's and our customers are going to stay forever young and we're not going to become old and tired."

However, Adams and O'Reilly also have a handful of restaurants that have gone in a decidedly different direction in the past few years. Franchisees call them "theme restaurants," and there is no more vivid example than the fantastical McDonald's restaurant in San Carlos Park.

Diners looking for their latest Big Mac fix here are transported to a childlike wonderland of games. Pillars in the restaurant are made to look like giant rooks from a game of chess; the bathroom doors are painted with huge king and queen playing cards. In the center of the restaurant are four upright, arcade-style game consoles offering free video games.

"It's so cool," whispers five-year-old Levi Yarnell, looking wide-eyed at all the games. Levi comes to this McDonald's regularly with his mother and two sisters. "They have all kinds of cool games."

The walls are covered with dozens of mounted and framed board games of yore-a 1949 edition of Cootie, a 1961 version of Stratego, a Happy Days game from 1976. A huge Twister board covers one wall, and there's even a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game from 2000.

"I like looking at some of the original versions [of the games]," says Levi's mom, Carissa Yarnell. "We have [the game] Life, but we didn't have the original version they have here."

Capping the fantasy décor is a massive Wheel of Fortune that hangs from the ceiling, alit in a rainbow of colors.

"This restaurant has a younger clientele compared to the rest of Southwest Florida-a lot of young families," says Adams. "They really seem to enjoy that theme."

Other themed restaurants in the Adams and O'Reilly camp include a north Naples location with a clubhouse theme, reminiscent of an upscale golf club; a sports theme in Golden Gate with multiple televisions broadcasting games; and a Polynesian theme on Marco Island, replete with murals of hula dancers and lots of tropical thatching.

"We've got birds sitting on the rafters in the ceiling," Adams says. "It's a very fun restaurant."

Although customers like these types of restaurants, he doesn't have any new ones in the works, partly due to the economies of scale; face it, how many giant Wheels of Fortune do you need? It's also clear from corporate McDonald's that individually-themed restaurants are not part of its grand plan.

"It's certainly not a direction in which the business is headed," Proud says. "We're more headed towards a distinctive, contemporary, relevant look."

In other words: forever young.

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