Tampa area McDonald's are a template for the nation

TAMPA Time was, the unspoken rule for running a McDonald's restaurant was don't make anybody too comfortable.

Bring in the customers, then move them out. Hard benches and Spartan décor helped keep the place from developing into a leisurely hangout.

Now, that's exactly the kind of hangout McDonald's wants to cultivate.

The burger giant increasingly competes for customers with coffee giant Starbucks, Panera and even Dunkin' Donuts.

So along with more upscale coffee and salads, McDonald's is investing about $1 billion nationwide in a broad revamp.

Several locations in the Tampa Bay area are among those first to test a more modern and sleek design built to accommodate families, business meetings and students with homework. Group tables, cozy lounge areas and free Wi-Fi for everyone.

Last week, a group of Wall Street investment analysts traveled to Seffner for a private tour of a McDonald's that had been knocked down and rebuilt into a model that could be replicated across thousands of new McDonald's locations.

"We're still a food and beverage company," said Blake Casper, chairman of Caspers Company, which operates 50 McDonald's stores in Tampa.

McDonald's has evolved a long way from the days as a walk-up burger joint, he said. Now more customers are wireless workers on the go, time-pressed families and students – and stores need to serve them all.

"We've learned a lot from the other places where our customers are going," Casper said.

Individual McDonald's franchise owners have some flexibility with design, but more locations will move to a more modern design:

•An area with long, bench-seating for groups to sit together.

•Groups of low chairs with coffee tables for conversations.

•More stylish lighting.

•Flat-screen TVs showing a mix of ads for McDonald's and TV shows.

•Soundproofing between the dining area and kid's play areas.

•Dark tile flooring and modern glass dividers between eating areas.

Jimmy Williams Sr. has been coming to this Seffner restaurant nearly every breakfast for decades, he said. "I just walk up and they already know what I want," he said. "I like the look. It's more modern, updated. Now if they would just start making grits."

Last year, 16 restaurants in the greater Tampa Bay area underwent a redesign, and 35 are on track for redevelopment this year – five or more as complete tear-downs and rebuilds.

McDonald's has reason to watch chains like Panera. The so-called fast casual restaurant segment continues to outpace the industry as a whole, with the top 100 chains growing 6 percent to nearly $18.9 billion in sales, according to market tracker Technomic.

McDonald's this month posted better-than-expected 6-percent rise in sales at existing restaurants, partly as the company increased menu prices to offset higher commodity costs.

The most important part of this process may seem obvious, but too many restaurant companies overlook it, said Clark Wolf, a New York-based restaurant consultant.

"They are paying attention, putting their focus on the restaurants, not just looking at the bottom line," Wolf said. "They're going into the locations, seeing what works, what doesn't and what needs to be fixed, and 100 percent of the time, the result of that is improvement."

Restaurants like McDonald's have a long tradition of using Tampa as a test-bed for new ideas, Wolf said, as this market has a large segment that responds well to industrialized food making.

John Frost, owner of another McDonald's franchise group in north Tampa said customers have been craving a change in style and a place to sit down and work.

"We had people sitting down and unplugging the ATM machine to plug in their notebook computer," Frost said.

His restaurant at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and Interstate 75 was completely renovated and now has scores of power outlets, several Wi-Fi zones and more separate seating areas in groups.

"We have students come in here with their homework now, and we never really saw that before," he said.

Along the way, Frost said his company has overhauled many of its operations, including the drive-through area where the restaurant generates 60 and 70 percent of its customer traffic. The goal: limit the "order to bag" time to 90 seconds or less.

The revamped drive-up services shave seconds from each order with a mix of technology and physics:

•There are dual drive-through lanes, and digital cameras that take photos of each car. When cashiers see the order on their screen, the information appears superimposed over a photo of that car to keep orders straight. That speeds up processing by more than 100 percent, as cars with complex orders don't delay other faster orders.

•A new machine toasts buns in 17 seconds instead of 22.

•An automatic drink machine connected to the drive-through ordering system selects the cup size, fills it with ice and fluid, then rotates the cup to the clerk at the pickup window, saving a few seconds.

•Frying oil is now delivered by tanker truck and fed through tubes in the ceiling to fryers, saving the time and labor of employees carrying boxes of oil to fryers.

•At the sandwich prep lines, there are several racks of toppings at eye-level, sauces are kept in large "guns" rather than small bottles and sandwich boxes face outwards with the name of each sandwich on the top. Each small change saves several seconds.

Some McDonald's nationwide are testing a drive-through system where drivers actually speak through the microphone to operators at a call center. The order data then flows to the restaurant kitchens, and the cashier no longer needs to make change for one customer while taking an order for another.

And Frost expects one change will make drive-through customers especially happy. McDonald's is inspecting and upgrading every drive through microphone and speaker system.

"You can really hear everyone much better," he said. "There's no more, 'What, what did you say?'"

rmullins@tampatrib.com

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