Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Alpha8472
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by Alpha8472 »

The Mansard design was all about brand recognition. When people are in an unfamiliar place and they see a familiar design, they gravitate toward it. I was visiting Disneyland as a child and I saw a Mansard McDonald's across the street. My family decided to have lunch there rather than at Disneyland. The restaurant seemed more familiar to us, and we knew what food was available.

In Psychology, I learned that people gravitate toward the tallest building. So if you have 2 restaurants to choose from, which one will you go to. More people will go to the taller one. That is why many stores or restaurants will build tall facades or tall signs on towers. The taller the building, the more attractive it is. Tall buildings evoke a sense of safety or refuge in an unfamiliar place. CVS did this on their cookie cutter stores where they built tall entrance vestibules. It attracts people. Burger King added the tall wedge design to be like a tall tower. Theaters added tall towers or spires to bring in the crowds.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on November 8th, 2021, 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by Super S »

BatteryMill wrote: November 8th, 2021, 8:29 am

One explanation I have heard for these fast-food buildings turning boxy and generic is that it makes it easier to exchange between brands and different tenants in case one goes bust. Is this the primary factor?

Perhaps, but McDonald's historically does not have nearly as many defunct restaurants as other chains. They seem to make an effort to keep the restaurant open.

When traveling it is easy to spot former locations of Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy's, and a few others. It is very rare to spot a former McDonald's being used by another business.
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by BatteryMill »

Alpha8472 wrote: November 8th, 2021, 10:36 am The Mansard design was all about brand recognition. When people are in an unfamiliar place and they see a familiar design, they gravitate toward it. I was visiting Disneyland as a child and I saw a Mansard McDonald's across the street. My family decided to have lunch there rather than at Disneyland. The restaurant seemed more familiar to us, and we knew what food was available.

In Psychology, I learned that people gravitate toward the tallest building. So if you have 2 restaurants to choose from, which one will you go to. More people will go to the taller one. That is why many stores or restaurants will build tall facades or tall signs on towers. The taller the building, the more attractive it is. Tall buildings evoke a sense of safety or refuge in an unfamiliar place. CVS did this on their cookie cutter stores where they built tall entrance vestibule. It attracts people. Burger King added the tall wedge design to be like a tall tower. Theaters added tall towers or spires to bring in the crowds.
Don't forget Target's airport-style atrium and a few others. Low-down shopping centers seem to be more of a thing of the past, interesting to see how such thought has spread throughout retail architecture. Although, why would they sacrifice unique elements if the main purpose for the new school of fast food building design is to have structures constructed taller?
Super S wrote: November 8th, 2021, 11:17 am Perhaps, but McDonald's historically does not have nearly as many defunct restaurants as other chains. They seem to make an effort to keep the restaurant open.

When traveling it is easy to spot former locations of Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy's, and a few others. It is very rare to spot a former McDonald's being used by another business.
I've seen at least one example of a closed Mansard store having the white accents stripped.
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by Bagels »

I've worked extensively with McDonalds. They require franchisees to remodel/rebuild restaurants, which is why virtually no vintage McDonald's (sans the Downy store, which was a franchisee of the original McDonald's, not Ray Kroc's) remain. If franchisees want to relocate, they face bruising rent hikes since McD's owns/will own the land; they're also required to demolish the old restaurant. In the few instances in which the franchisee gave up the restaurant (e.g. inner-cities like Detroit), McD's will either demolish or heavily modify it beyond recognition before selling it.
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by jamcool »

Which is why the McDonald’s Corp is still an independent company, unlike its competitors who have been under continuous ownership changes, spin-offs, new ownership, etc
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by BillyGr »

Bagels wrote: November 9th, 2021, 1:09 am I've worked extensively with McDonalds. They require franchisees to remodel/rebuild restaurants, which is why virtually no vintage McDonald's (sans the Downy store, which was a franchisee of the original McDonald's, not Ray Kroc's) remain. If franchisees want to relocate, they face bruising rent hikes since McD's owns/will own the land; they're also required to demolish the old restaurant. In the few instances in which the franchisee gave up the restaurant (e.g. inner-cities like Detroit), McD's will either demolish or heavily modify it beyond recognition before selling it.
That may be the case now, but wasn't always. We have one here that became an Italian restaurant and is now a church. It does look different, but that was the Italian restaurant remodeling it, not McDonalds.
That particular location moved in the early 1980's to a mansard style building, which was just demolished in the last couple months as a new one is being built next door and the old site will be parking.

There is also one of those inner-city ones in a different direction that closed a couple years back and it is being turned into a small grocery store for the area that has nothing like that available. That was the era of the 3 window drive thru and it didn't change too much after closing (just boarded up and they had people paint designs on the boards to hopefully avoid unwanted paintings).
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by DFWRetaileWatcher »

veteran+ wrote: November 8th, 2021, 8:22 am
Super S wrote: November 7th, 2021, 6:06 pm
submariner wrote: November 7th, 2021, 8:23 am

To be fair, all of the pictures you posted are "generic" red-brick-and-mansard-roof variations on a single theme, just like stores today. It's a different architectural style, but just as cookie-cutter as the examples you posted.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
The Mansard roof at least had a specific look as a McDonald's. The modern "box" like structures could be easily mistaken for a newer Carl's Jr., Jack In The Box, or any number of other fast food restaurants.
If branding, familiarity, identification, uniqueness...have "value" then YES I get it.

None of those styles were regal back then and they still aren't now. Architecturally, they all were gimmicky and pedestrian.

IMHO :-)
It appears my post might have been taken out of context (perhaps I did word it poorly). But the bolded is exactly the point I was trying to making.

And yes, I do think those things (uniqueness, familiarity, identification, etc.) have value from a marketing perspective. Besides the fact that it gives the chain a specific look that people can differentiate from other generic chains, it shows your customers that your company takes enough pride in its brand to invest heavily in establishing a specific look. These restaurant chains seem to have forgotten about that over the years. But we can agree to disagree about this.
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by veteran+ »

I believe that many of those iconic designs are being replaced by more efficient, productive and cost effective designs.

That's not an endorsement per se, but I believe that is the trend (form must follow function?).

I suspect that most of those design affectations are not cheap and perhaps have been increasing.

:idea:
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Re: Mcdonalds Eyebrow Remodel

Post by Brian Lutz »

The Mcdonald's in Snohomish, which was a former Mansard design that was torn down and rebuilt during 2020, has finally opened up its lobby for the first time, and the interior design is very bland overall (most of the walls are plain subway tile with a couple of random accent walls with random graphic treatments.) The restaurant was also rebuilt with space for a Playplace but it has not been installed yet, so it's mostly just a big empty room in front of the seating area. There are also no customer facing soda machines currently, although there's an empty counter where they would normally be. I'm not particularly impressed, all things considered. If you go inside they are only taking orders through the kiosks (the registers are not staffed) or you can do mobile orders. It feels like they had planned to just operate exclusively through the drive thru indefinitely, and were blindsided by a mandate of some sort to reopen the indoor dining area. Either that or they figure that the amount of dine-in traffic at this point is low enough that they can keep up with it.
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