A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style

Re:A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style by joezydeco on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @08:12AM (#878872)

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.

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Re:A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style by mseebach on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @09:02AM (#878956)

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".

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Re:A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style by Tichy on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @09:55AM (#879029)

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.

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Re:A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style by joezydeco on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @09:33AM (#878994)

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.

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