Earlier this year, McDonald’s opted for a modern, glassy facelift at Clark Street and Ontario in Chicago, where the iconic “Rock ‘n Roll” McDonald’s once made its name decades prior.
Designed by Ross Barney Architects, this flagship store now encompasses a full city block or 19,000 square feet, houses 70 trees at ground level and is even equipped with on-site solar panels to demonstrate how serious the fast-food giant is about a sustainable future.
That’s not all, touch-screen ordering kiosks have been added for efficiency, as well as cell phone chargers at every table ail and ample eating space to ensure you have a perfect, modern-day eating experience.
From start to finish, including design and construction, it took a mere 13 months to complete the project. And while it paints a picture of how the fast food purveyor may operate in the future, it’s been met with some skepticism.
BGR published an entire feature dedicated to ways McDonald’s is ripping off Apple’s look, starting with the glass exterior and commitment to renewable energy all the way to the expansive pedestrian space that is similar to San Francisco’s Apple store.
But the detail hardest to overlook is the self-ordering kiosks, as McDonalds’s plans to have all 14,000 locations by 2020 equipped with these stalls. Yes, while the prospect of adding more machines gets rid of the cashier role, most chains claim to be swapping front of house roles to the back of the house. In fact, for McDonald’s specifically, Nick Karavites, owner and operator of the flagship store is even looking to employ 50 more people.
Nonetheless, this new design focuses on McDonald’s “Experience of the Future” revamp and 5,000 of the chain’s restaurants qualify for upgrades by 2020. Now, similar to Starbucks, you can order food from a mobile app and pick up your Big Mac while never speaking to a single soul.
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