Masters of Design

For dejeuner, Denis Weil chills out in the gimmicky lounge he created. Reclining in a leather-backed Lipse chair designed by Wolfgang Mezger, he munches a southwestern chicken salad and sips a drupe smoothie. The ambiance is foodie chic: hardwood floors, sleek white tables, a wooden-slat ceiling, and tranquil lighting from a low-hanging ceiling lamp.

Weil spritzes a lime over his salad, enjoying the laid-back vibe that lets him focus on the food. "I beloved this salad, it'due south so cravable," he coos in a slight European accent. Just and then, Weil'south colleague Jim Carras strides past, interrupting his reverie. "Hullo, Denis, I see you lot are sitting in the absurd section."

Weil chuckles, because, technically, he is in the cool section. His contemporary lounge sits smack in the eye of a newly revamped McDonald'south in Oak Brook, Illinois. Yep, McDonald'due south. Weil, McDonald'due south VP of concept and design, has spent the by 5 years educating Carras (VP of U.S. eating house evolution) and a host of other executives and franchisees throughout the $23 billion company that a McDonald's eating place doesn't have to mean principal colors and fiberglass booths.

All the more funny is the fact that Weil isn't particularly cool. When the stout 49-year-old pulls up in an Audi A5, he rapidly dismisses it equally his "midlife-crunch car." His casual attire of a blue button-down shirt and loose-plumbing fixtures khakis makes him look more like the guy in front of yous at the register than some ultra-hip designer. "There is a mythology that blueprint is a glamorous, personality-led action," says Tim Dark-brown, CEO of Ideo, who has consulted with Weil on McDonald'south customer experience. "Denis really represents that you don't take to wear a black turtleneck to practice information technology." Dark-brown calls Weil an "experience engineer" who isn't afraid to tap customers for input.

Which fits perfectly into McDonald's lowest aesthetic. "Information technology'south a community center," says Weil of the restaurant, significant McDonald's is one of the few places cheap and casual plenty to be accessible to most everyone. "There are very few public places left where individual things happen." The restaurant in Oak Brook has been divided into four "seating zones," each designed for a different activity–chilling out, working, casual dining, and group events. That each space also connotes a different maturity level that might lead to a specific carte du jour choice is precisely the betoken.

McDonald'due south grown-up thinking about design is office of its "Plan to Win" growth strategy, initiated in 2003 when executives realized their core markets had gorged on expansion. From 1974 to 2003, the company supersized from 2,259 storefronts in the United States and but 13 internationally to more than 30,000 in 100-plus countries, each ane basically a facsimile of the 1 before it. "We just stopped figuring out how to brand things modern and relevant," says Ken Koziol, VP of innovation. The visitor was battered by criticism from Fast Food Nation and antiglobalization forces, and it seemed to be searching for a future beyond burgers and fries, experimenting with dwelling-style meals (Boston Market place), burritos (Chipotle), java (McCafé), and even DVD rentals (Redbox). The Golden Arches increasingly looked like a corporate shrug, and its stock price dipped beneath $xiii a share.

Since that nadir, the Program to Win has helped drive the stock upwards 437%. The strategy'south three pillars are menu innovation, shop renovation, and an upgrade of the ordering experience. McDonald's efficiency and its continued expansion of premium menu items–snack wraps! sweet tea! frappes!–has helped boost the average annual store gross by 25% over the past six years to around $2 million.

The side by side phase, McDonald's execs say, depends on blueprint. "People swallow with their eyes first," says president and COO Don Thompson. "If you have a restaurant that is appealing, gimmicky, and relevant both from the street and interior, the food tastes ameliorate."

Next year, McDonald'south volition launch its get-go total makeover campaign since the Carter administration, allocating $two.4 billion to redo at to the lowest degree 400 domestic outposts, refurbish i,600 restaurants abroad, and build some other ane,000. The company's European and Asia-Pacific regions accept already seen success with the new styles: 2d-quarter sales in Europe, for example, were up v.2% year over year, an uptick the visitor credits in big function to revamped stores. Over the past two years, Weil has tested mod renovations throughout the United States, in such varied locales as Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Kearney, Missouri. In July, the company reported a 6% to 7% sales jump at U.S. stores that had been redesigned. Weil adds that when McDonald's puts enough refurbished stores in a market, customers alter their perception of the brand: The new look fifty-fifty makes them more than likely to try new carte items.

"Every bit the younger generation starts to run into McDonald's every bit a place you become to eat instead of just picking upward food, you could very well change their behavior for years to come," says Darren Tristano of restaurant consultancy Technomic. "The next step," he says, "is to draw people in for a dining experience."

Simply Weil tin can't just wave a hot apple pie and redesign McDonald's. "We are blessed with creative tensions," he says, chuckling over again. Those tensions are more than organizational and operational than truly creative. McDonald'south is a decentralized creature–81% of its restaurants are run by franchisees (McDonald'southward calls them "owner-operators"), a constituency divided by not just national borders and time zones but also past cultural expectations. Blueprint also has to part within what the company calls the "organization"; no changes tin can interfere with its operational prowess. The question, Weil says, is, "How do you lot increment service speed and efficiency and optimize the customer experience at the same time?"

The answer will presently pop upwardly in a neighborhood near you lot. Weil has created what he calls a "living network" where ideas bubble up from McDonald's global partners–owner-operators, suppliers, outside design firms–and are relentlessly filtered and tested past Weil and his team. "One of the strengths of my job is to conceptualize what happens in the market and distill the principle out of information technology," Weil explains. This year, he volition host representatives from 25,000 restaurants at his Innovation Center, in Romeoville, Illinois, to propagate the best ideas systemwide. "This is not snazzy stuff," Ideo'southward Dark-brown says, "but McDonald'south has become one of the few companies that does design management well." Thompson says of Weil, McDonald'due south almost senior design exec always: "He's get our centerpoint. We never really had that."

The design revival of America's most iconic fast-food company actually started in France. On a contempo overcast solar day at Le McDonald'southward across the street from the Louvre, the eating place is packed with the usual throng of gawky American and Russian tourists but also some workers on lunch break from the haute-couture shops around the museum commune. Two curvy Parisian shopgirls gossip about the visitor's face-elevator over a tray loaded with staples: Big Mac, Chicken McNuggets, large fries, and a soft drink. "Nosotros just take an hour for lunch, and it's fast and cheap," says 26-year-old Anaïs Sidali, not quite giving credit to the new aesthetic. Nevertheless she and her friend, Camilla Jansson, have become regulars, and they prefer to consume their fast-food bounty in the McCafé function of the eating house, with its dark, tasteful booths and counter seating punctuated by a cluster of red and white modernist chairs.

A decade ago, in the midst of French globalization protests and charges of cultural imperialism, Pierre Woreczek, primary brand and strategy officer for McDonald'southward Europe, realized that the giant clown and prefab furniture had to go if McDonald'southward was to accept a time to come on the continent. "Everything that was global was seen as non very quality, but efficient and profit-driven," he says. Woreczek tapped one of France'south leading designers, Philippe Avanzi, to provide some much-needed "intuition" about how to fix the funfair atmosphere. "I retrieve it was very of import to have someone who was able to create and express his ain thinking exterior the visitor," Woreczek says.

Avanzi had to work within a specific constraint. The French don't snack–they eat a big lunch–so making any change that affected the restaurant'southward loftier seating capacity would be a mistake. Instead, he added some contemporary touches: glass partitions, Arne Jacobsen chairs, and more avant-garde wall graphics (one looks like a giant thumbprint). "As well much design would have been like a caricature," Avanzi says. "We desire to create surprise and excitement where people don't expect it."

It appears to have been just plenty. In 2006, Weil made Avanzi the cardinal designer for all of Europe, and sales skyrocketed from $7.ane billion just earlier Weil made his motion to $9.3 billion four years later on, a bump from about 35% of total visitor sales to twoscore%. European customers spend about three times more per visit than their U.S. counterparts, on what's basically the American menu. "It's cheesy. Information technology'due south unhealthy," Jansson adds conspiratorially, relishing her guilty pleasure every bit some kid tromps past with a French-accented Shrek figurine.

Inspired by the European success, Weil has appointed a corporate design leader for each of the company's operating regions; that person contracts with a regional designer who tin can effigy out what other local design elements might brand a infinite experience private and authentic. "We are not competing with our straight competitors anymore," Woreczek says. "Nosotros are competing with the streets," noting that each region volition need to seem more in tune with what is hip to attract customers.

In addition, Weil solicits ideas from leading design firms such as Ideo, Rockwell Strategic, and bazaar firms around the globe. "I was surprised by the latitude we were given," says Tom Williams of Sydney-based Juicy Design, who pioneered local design concepts in Australia and is now working on stores in Asia. "Our challenge was to make things unique."

Chocolate-brown at Ideo adds that rather than accept other people's ideas wholesale, Weil tests each concept in-house to figure out whether to challenge or refine information technology. "The frail residuum that any long-standing brand has is how to modernize without losing the value of your heritage and becoming something shallow and insubstantial," Brownish says. "I think you accept to experiment a bit."

"If Martians came down to Globe and visited a McDonald's, a mail office, and a banking company, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference," Weil says while enjoying a late-morning snack of chips and Chicken McNuggets. (Weil grew up in a kosher household, and so he never tasted much of McDonald's wares until recently.) "They would just encounter that everything starts with a line, has a counter that acts as a divider where the coin exchanges, and has something hidden going on way in the dorsum."

Weil'southward Martian reeducation camp–and his experimentation lab–is a windowless 250,000-square-foot warehouse adjoining a Happy Meal–toys distribution eye. This is McDonald's elevation-hugger-mugger Innovation Center, a clinking exam bed capable of modeling the interior kitchen and dining rooms of three restaurants at the same time. It's hidden in manifestly sight, nestled amid other warehouses and homogenous strip malls in the s Chicago suburb of Romeoville. Code name: Switzerland, but that'due south non considering Weil was built-in in Zurich. It'due south a neutral design zone open to all of McDonald's partners to attempt their ain simulations. The hope is that data sharing can help everyone profit.

During a contempo visit, heart director Melody Roberts, whom Weil poached from Ideo, is using one of the model restaurants to test out a new card design. At the same time, the space is existence prepped for a contingent of Russian operators visiting the side by side day. (The Russians are coming!) Banks of cash registers are aligned, and nigh a dozen people are hustling behind the counter as they try to simulate one of Russia's fearsome lunch rushes. (The Russians are coming!)

Aesthetically, the place feels annihilation but appetizing. A pile of unused kitchen equipment sits along ane wall. Power cords dangle from rafters with missing ceiling tiles, ameliorate for unplugging and reorienting everything during set changes. All of the props are foam core so they tin be altered chop-chop, but at that place's little to muffle the echo of beeping cooking timers. The air reeks of french fries.

Weil's lovin' it: He's made and remade his career precisely through this sort of gonzo experimentation. Before he joined McDonald's in 2001 every bit the entrepreneur-in-residence in accuse of nurturing non-burger experiments like McCafé, he'd earned a degree in chemical technology and tried everything from production evolution at Procter & Adventure'southward Pampers division (combating saggy diapers) to beingness a make manager for Hugo Boss to running an Internet-dating company before finally going back to schoolhouse in 1998 to get his chief's in blueprint planning from Illinois Institute of Applied science. "I've been on a quest to figure out how to merge design and concern," he says.

Today, Weil isn't trying to prove a particular hypothesis. He patiently stands just offstage, watching intently every bit a mother whose proper name tag reads karen takes her son Joey onto the client-packed Russian ready. They're a real family who agreed to be here in exchange for a gratuitous meal and a peek inside the skunk works.

Karen and Joey huddle over a laminated menu with images of food items, ignoring the text-driven overhead menu board. They are being trailed by a two-person documentary crew from Conifer, a behavioral research firm. One adult female scribbles on a yellowish notepad while another records the action with a handheld camera. Weil and Roberts will afterwards parse the play-past-play for broader themes.

A few minutes later, the mother and son effort a image of a self-ordering kiosk. "Oh, y'all already know what you are ordering," Karen exclaims, when Joey starts interacting with it similar a video game. Self-ordering has been added in many European stores, helping to convalesce hectic noontime traffic. (McDonald's France, for example, does 70% of its business concern during luncheon.) Whether either accommodation makes it to the Usa is not Weil's current concern. "The mom and son shared a moment while looking over that menu," he says. "And the child obviously felt empowered by the kiosk. It gives customers more control and makes information technology easier to make decisions. Those are the directions we might want to explore."

Such insights are emblematic of the Innovation Center's part as a clearinghouse for ideas from around the world. Weil, who has been smart not to concede also much command to pattern consultants who might not fully sympathise how operations and aesthetics need to mesh at McDonald'due south, says, "Nosotros don't design in a vacuum here. If an idea doesn't come up alive in the restaurant, it doesn't work." That's why Weil will routinely pull his team out of a briefing-room brainstorming session onto the lab floor, shuffling equipment and cutting foam core to make his points more quickly. "Once you can see information technology," Weil says, "you can show information technology to an operations person and they can come across the differences and they unremarkably get it." And if they don't? "Echo often," he says. "This is the only mode to line upwardly what we are doing with our business needs."

To evidence me merely how precise he'southward willing to go, Weil invites me to aid him evaluate the operations side of the Russian lunch rush. There is a crowd of mock customers picking up imitation orders and handfuls of ultra-greenish imitation change. The company uses real-time data pulled from bodily customer orders at restaurants to make sure the examination kitchens can simulate exactly both traffic period and capacity. Weil and I pull a ticket for two, but when nosotros finally arroyo the crowded annals to get our lodge, things are at a breaking point: The cashier makes change rapidly, only just before we go out, a server reaches out and steals our medium Coke off the pickup tray to give to another customer. "Was that supposed to be role of the simulation?" Weil asks aloud, a bit bemused. He shrugs, murmuring, like a sitcom dial line, the i highly unpredictable thing he must contend with: "Human behavior."

Weil's scientific design method has led to some subtle but important changes in redesigned stores. Although condensed kitchen setups make it impractical to showcase how all the food is being fabricated to guild–in the spirit of the early McDonald's of the '40s and '50s–Weil has restored some alive entertainment value past positioning McCafé barista stands next to the registers. Customers can view their drinks made with traditional espresso machines that pull fresh shots and steamed milk on demand–merely the style Starbucks used to practice before it got too big. At breakfast, employees must stir a cup of oatmeal (which Weil enjoyed the commencement morning I met him) a minimum of 12 times earlier serving it to the client, both to mix the ingredients properly and to point homemade goodness. Weil has too redesigned menus with larger-than-life photos of the food–a 21st-century stab at telegraphing quality.

Considering bulldoze-through orders represent approximately threescore% of sales at fast-food restaurants, Weil actively tests possible on-the-go improvements using golf carts in the Innovation Centre. Weil and his team have a patent pending on a pattern that adds an boosted window for people with enormous orders. The drive-through of the renovated Kearney shop, a rural outpost just by Kansas City's suburbs, features ii lanes of cars lined up at two dissimilar ordering kiosks. This rejiggered drive-through isn't going to discover its way into MoMA, but functionally, it's genius: Information technology consolidates the traffic around the restaurant then everything appears much less gridlocked.

"Denis is large on frameworks," says Sigi Moeslinger, whose New York–based Antenna Design created the interfaces for the ordering kiosks Weil is experimenting with. "He's big into producing things that are transferable and sharable throughout the whole company."

In one case ideas laissez passer Weil's muster in the Innovation Center, he has to infuse them throughout the visitor, trying to sell thousands of possessor-operators on overhauling. At this stage, Weil seems like an interior decorator presenting a portfolio with diverse color patterns, price points, and suggested uses. "I accept to develop a better analogy," he says. (And when he does, he'll probably prototype it.)

At a corporate conference in Apr, Weil debuted what he calls Blueprint Academy, a soaring tent filled with booths showing examples of innovations that have happened around the world, from LED sign lights to clean and open beverage stations to variations of an all-blackness compatible. Weil built 3 full-scale replicas of his main restaurants of the futurity, all now bachelor for guild. Each is intended to fit a specific worldview. The U.S. store model, called Arcade, has a modernist white blocky facade, precipitous athwart yellow awnings, and a stylized single-arch sculpture that echoes the Ray Kroc McDonald's of the 1950s. The European model, known equally a folded design, has a deconstructed version of the company's 1970s mansard-roof style. The Australasian model is more futuristic, as symbolized by a big red "blade" shaped similar a chimney jutting skyward.

A computer lab let the 13,000 attendees tinker with how to incorporate the new exterior and interior designs into their existing buildings. (Many of the U.S. designs came from Studio Gaia, which did the exclusive Tao restaurant and lounge in Las Vegas.) Slogans similar do it right. do it fully adorned the walls, a nod to Weil's belief that total remodels pay off much more than than doing an interior alone. McDonald'southward recently opened a moving ridge of thirteen new stores in Tokyo on the same day, so information was available on how coordinated marketing blitzes can attract attention. Continuing at the get out with a mortarboard on his head, Weil offered each person who attended Pattern U. a key chain with a tape measure and level to spur them to go home and get started.

The one change Weil hopes to institutionalize systemwide is a recalibration of the register expanse. A restaurant'due south historical traffic menses dictates the number of registers. Weil has added an overhead screen that flashes guild numbers for pickup to convalesce a clogged annals area. At the revamped restaurant in Kearney, that means just two active registers and tons of broad-open counter space for picking up your gild.

The ultimate conclusion of whether to embrace a redesign and which iteration might work best lies with possessor-operators. Equally an inducement, McDonald'southward is offering to pay about 40% of the estimated $400,000 to $700,000 cost of renovations. That's not surprising considering this isn't the first time the company has asked its franchisees to buy into its design learning curve. In 2006, a number of franchisees balked at the expense of adopting the Arcade exterior when it was initially conceived. And over the past seven years, 4,700 stores accept invested in less-aggressive interior remodels that are at present being superseded by McDonald's new offerings.

"Information technology'south a very gimmicky and inviting restaurant," says Paul Hendel, an possessor-operator with xix franchises in New York, of the European model. Final Oct, he redid his 186-seat restaurant in the Chelsea neighborhood using the French-inspired design. With its open up drinking glass-front entry, multicolored chairs, and oasis-similar 2d flooring, his joint saw an immediate sales rush. Though he won't share numbers, Hendel says he's serving more customers with a higher check average than ever before. That prompted him to invest in a new "wow" gadget: a handheld lodge taker that will let roving waitstaff to funnel orders from the back of the lines into the kitchen.

Nonetheless, even when a redesigned eating place does well, a question remains: What happens when the novelty factor wears off? "Dialing up the design in a restaurant makes it a little stronger," Weil says, "but it will as well lose freshness faster, so we accept to update more oftentimes." Williams, the pb Australian designer, says that by reshuffling, reupholstering, and switching out graphics, his first store design in Melbourne, built in 2000, has lasted a decade. "A lot of the planning principles we use accept longevity to them," he says. Williams has spent about $120,000 on ii evolutionary refreshes versus iv times as much for a complete overhaul. He says Weil'southward new templates have a cleverness that won't go stale equally they go more ubiquitous and familiar, because operators tin can practice little things such as rearrange the furniture because it's non bolted down. "Yes, let's make them relevant," Williams says, "but let'due south also make them concluding."

After finishing his lunch in Oak Brook, Weil heads over to a garbage can to demonstrate his latest innovation. Rather than the usual swinging gate in front end of the trash bin, this 1 is open faced with a slimmer, oval-shaped slot that notwithstanding seems to shield customers from an unpleasant view or smell. He leans over and slides his trash off the tray and into the receptacle. This is the last step in the client experience. "It always took ii hands to operate," he says, one to hold the gate open and ane to bollix with the tray. "I wanted it to be quick and piece of cake, to leave the client with a good impression as they leave." A second later, a woman hurrying back to work steps past Weil and tries to dump her ain tray of burger containers and dirty napkins into the bin. She intuitively understands the design and tips the tray at an bending, one-handed. The garbage refuses to slide off. "Eeeep!" she squeaks as she loses her grip on the back of the tray. We all picket it tumble into the trash. Weil cringes while she gingerly fishes it out. "That but happens one in a hundred times," he says. Time to go back to the Innovation Center.

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