McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

pseudo3d
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by pseudo3d »

cjd wrote: July 30th, 2020, 8:00 pm I figured that the grease and odor problems were part of the reason Walmart tends to have Subway than fast food. Although I thought too, that it could be that Subway is seen as a healthier fast food choice than McD.

If you think about it though there are still fryers in the deli and the smell still tends to circulate around that section of the store.
I do remember that the Subway was part of a "healthy" push, but it didn't seem to be applied equally.
The 1988 Wal-Mart got a McDonald's when it was renovated and expanded in the mid-1990s. It disappeared after a few years and became a Radio Grill, then got a Subway around 2004-2005. When it became a Supercenter, a new location was built.
The 1993 Supercenter had a McDonald's (in the back) which remained up until the mid to late 2010s, and was never replaced.
The 2014 Supercenter had a Subway (owned by the same franchisee that runs it in the other Walmart and the others in town, though due to the large number of stores, they have a number of bad managers, and this was one of them...the one in the 1988 store also is terribly run).

A 2012 Walmart (Supercenter) got a McDonald's in its opening and the last time I was there it was open. The others, both older (from the 1990s) and newer stores in Houston tend to have McDonald's too, including Northline (2010 build, one of the sketchiest/worst McDonald's I've see), Silber (2011) but not Gulfton (2015)...that one has a Subway.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by babs »

Walmart should add some sort of coffee shop option. Would be a great opportunity for Starbucks to add Seattle's Best Coffee at Walmart stores. Coffee shops can be cheap to operate with nice margins if the sales mix is just right. That's why so many grocery stores have Starbucks kiosks.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by Alpha8472 »

Starbucks is closing down many of their walk in cafes. They want to focus on drive thru. The pandemic had shown them that the era of dine in cafes is over. With the economic downturn, profit comes from drive thru transactions. Starbucks is downsizing many cafes into take out only.

Walmart tried to run their own espresso cafes before, but they did not attract enough business. The type of people who spend money on Starbucks are higher income people like the customers that shop at Target.

The Walmart customers are the kind of people who get cheap coffee drinks from McDonald's.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by BillyGr »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: July 30th, 2020, 9:57 am In reading through the posts on this thread, Wal-Mart seems to have had a lot of franchise based restaurants operate in its stores over the years. Three have been mentioned here-McDonald;s, Subway and Dunkin Donuts. I also recall eating at a Wendy's in one of the local stores some years ago. Have there been others?
One of ours here was originally an express KFC/Taco Bell (as neither of those brands had their own shop in the area, though KFC had been across the street a couple decades earlier.

They eventually switched to just their own grill, before moving to a superstore location which has Dunkin Donuts since opening.

Taco Bell wound up (several years later) back across the street as a combo with LJS (which is still there as far as I know, one of very few LJS left in this region).
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by Brian Lutz »

There are still at least a couple of McDonald's locations in Walmarts here that I know of (Tulalip and Lynnwood) but they have been closed since the Covid outbreak started, and remain closed now. My guess is that they aren't coming back. Tulalip is a larger location which will probably replace their McDonald's with something eventually, but Lynnwood is a smaller non Supercenter store, and I wouldn't be surprised if they just reclaimed the space for more mens' clothing (the store layout is a bit unusual, with the clothing section on the south wall of the building next to the store entrance) Another Walmart store near here (Marysville) has a Subway, which I believe has still been operating.

As for other tenants in Walmarts, a couple of the central Florida stores I've visited have had Checkers. I also saw one that had some sort of churro shop (Now there's one you could smell from all the way across the store.)
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by Super S »

The Walmart closest to my house originally had a McDonald's inside, and a full restaurant out front. When Walmart remodeled, the in-store McDonald's went away, but the McDonald's out front is still open, as well as a Subway that is also out front.

I seem to remember the Walmart in Vancouver, WA on Mill Plain having a setup for a very short time where you could order McDonald's food at the register and it would be ready as you left. Not sure if this was just a test or if others had this.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by cjd »

I know of one Walmart that has a Subway inside, and another in a separate small strip mall in an outparcel built at the same time as the Walmart itself. But that's not so surprising given the saturation of Subways in the 2000s.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by BillyGr »

Super S wrote: July 31st, 2020, 5:59 pm The Walmart closest to my house originally had a McDonald's inside, and a full restaurant out front. When Walmart remodeled, the in-store McDonald's went away, but the McDonald's out front is still open, as well as a Subway that is also out front.
We had one in this area where there was an existing regular McDonald's before the Walmart was built, about 3 driveways down from the Walmart entry and they also put one in the Walmart. I think that was the only one locally to have one in store, which always seemed odd that they would do that there, but not in other stores that didn't have other McDonald's nearby.
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by pseudo3d »

Alpha8472 wrote: July 30th, 2020, 10:54 pm Starbucks is closing down many of their walk in cafes. They want to focus on drive thru. The pandemic had shown them that the era of dine in cafes is over. With the economic downturn, profit comes from drive thru transactions. Starbucks is downsizing many cafes into take out only.
They're still opening sit-down cafes, there's one being built not far away from me.

Eventually, COVIDmania will go away and things will go back to normal (despite "the new normal" being hyped up, do you really expect that society will permanently keep up with handwashing?), I keep finding articles where analysts conflate government restrictions with consumer behavior, and only a fool would think "Well, the theaters are all closed, guess people don't like going to movies anymore".
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Re: McDonald's Closing 100 Walmart Restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

In my area in NV McDonalds has closed sit down in locations where it was reopened. As far as Starbucks goes, they have reopened inside, but only to order and get your drink and leave. No seating is inside and they have it marked that you cannot wait in front of the counter and must wait against the wall where the seating used to be. The entire condiment bar is empty and all condiments, straws, napkins, etc. must be requested from an employee. Both times I went in there this week I was the only customer but the drive through had steady business.
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