Have It Your Way: Fast-Food Restaurant Design
by Edward McMahon

Almost everywhere we go, stand identically designed fast-food restaurants. A look at how communities can gain control over fast-food franchise design and see that it fits the character of the community. Including a tour of cities and towns that have done so.

McDonald's! Burger King! Taco Bell! Wendy's! Hardee's! Pizza Hut! Subway! Kentucky Fried Chicken! Today there are more than 150,000 fast-food franchises in the United States, generating sales in excess of $80 billion a year. Ever since Ray Kroc franchised the first McDonald's in 1954, fast-food restaurants have succeeded in deploying their standardized images from coast to coast.

Many people obviously like fast food, if they didn't, fast-food restaurants wouldn't be such an enormous economic success. But many people also question the loss of community character and cultural distinctiveness that accompanies the cookie cutter architecture that seems to follow us everywhere. In a country of highly varied history, climate, culture, and terrain, thousands of cities and towns now look like they were put together with interchangeable parts.

Do fast-food restaurants all have to look exactly alike? Does a McDonald's in New Mexico have to be in the same style building as one in New York or New Hampshire? Does a franchise on Main Street have to took like the same business outside of town on the strip? The answer to all of these questions is no, of course not. Franchises can be encouraged, and if necessary required, to make their buildings "fit" with the natural and historic character of each local community.

Which of the following would you rather have in your community?

From top to bottom. a Hardee's in the former Red Wing, Minnesota, railroad station; a Taco Bell in a restored house in Ft. Collins, Colorado; ; a typical anywhere USA fast food design; and a new "Greek Revival" style McDonald's in Independence, Ohio.

Today, most fast-food chains are willing --sometimes even eager -- to give their restaurants more individual style. For the most part, however, citizens, elected officials, developers, planners, and the public-at-large have no idea that new franchises can be an attractive community asset rather than a homogenizing eyesore.

This article will discuss tools and techniques that cities and towns can use to get franchise development to respect community character. It will provide examples of some of the numerous communities that have worked with national restaurant chains to reuse historic buildings or to construct new buildings that respect local identity. And it will hopefully empower local citizens, and planning boards, to refuse to accept standardized franchise design when it is inappropriate to their community. ...

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