It's a ballsy move, since a whole day of lost sales is a pretty serious thing for a McDonald's store. The margins are pretty slim.

I worked for them once. We had a kitchen fire while preparing the store to open, about 5am. McDonald's brought in a crash team of people that worked with the fire department, insurance adjusters, cleanup workers, and health inspectors to get that store back into shape to open...at 7pm THAT NIGHT. On a SUNDAY. That's how serious lost business is.

It says they shut down to re-pave the parking lot. Sounds like something that has to be done every once in a while. Might be that the rouge franchise-taker just scheduled the re-pavement "conveniently".

Perhaps they just figured that most people would check out the new Wendy on it's opening day anyway, so they'd lose less business on that day than on any other day. That it ended up destroying the competition (if it did) could have been sheer luck.

Oh, I'm not doubting that at all. It's ballsy, but very very smart.

I have a general rule not to visit a new restaurant for the first two weeks because of this exact same "meltdown" scenario.

It could be, but I still doubt it. McDonald's runs a very tight ship; franchisees have little latitude to go "rogue". It's highly unlikely that a franchisee could shut down one day without corporate approval. They have traditionally welcomed others into their neighborhoods (while still maintaining #1 position, of course).

[Little known unpublished McDonald's fact: Not sure if it's still true, but at one time they honored all competitors coupons. Yes, they'd give you a free Big Mac with a free Whopper coupon.]

They may have kept the restaurant open and just closed the drive-thru lane. That's pretty much killing your lunch business, but the store is still effectively "open".

[And yeah the coupon thing is still there. I once spent half an hour arguing with a woman who knew about this fact and was trying to convince me a free Strawberry Shake was equivalent to a free Slurpee coupon she was holding. Had to say no to that one.]

You may be right there....I don't know if you could park a block away and walk into the McD's that day, but I do know no one would lol :)

Maybe if they were planning that pavement replacement anyway ... they could adjust so that it would fall on the certain date - the date of Wendy's opening.