Mr. Big

Five years after Bigari went to work for him, Cameron died in a mountain-climbing accident. Left on his own, Bigari purchased a single McDonald's outlet. As he nourished the beginnings of what would become a considerable fast-food empire, he started displaying a character trait that hadn't come from any of his mentors. "I was always tinkering with stuff," Bigari says with a laugh. "I look at something and say, why is it like that?"

When he was a kid, he'd imagined building a fusion reactor out of a coffee can and winning the Indy 500. Although that didn't happen, he never lost his interest in making something faster, better, more powerful. And now, with a McDonald's as his construction set and burgers, fries and milkshakes as his tools, he set out to do it.

Regulars at any Bigari McDonald's became accustomed to finding new gadgets. Bigari designed a way for his customers to use credit cards before such technology was available in other fast-food restaurants. He built machines that could cook doughnuts at the front counter while customers looked on. With the help of his daughter, he designed basketball-themed playgrounds that are now in McDonald's PlayPlaces nationwide. And corporate headquarters chose Bigari's restaurants to test a made-to-order food-preparation system called "Made for You" that's now at McDonald's stores around the world.

Not all of Bigari's innovations have been successful. A robotic french-fry machine proved too maintenance-heavy to be practical. The combination playground apparatus/washing machine that made a game out of cleaning the plastic balls from PlayPlace ball pits worked fine, but then McDonald's got rid of the pits. As for the in-restaurant climbing walls, "That was just stupid," says Bigari.

Bigari downplays his inventive genius. "I routinely find good ideas and steal them," he explains. But technological innovation is coded into his genetic makeup. He's rigged his home alarm system as a house-sized day planner: One beep means it's time for him to take out the trash, another buzz signifies that he needs to put chemicals in the hot tub. Bigari might forget these mundane chores otherwise; his mind moves at breakneck speed from one task to the next.

"He does jump from subject to subject. Sometimes you have to bring him back to task, but it's part of who he is," says Brenda, Bigari's second wife and the mother of three of his five children. "Trying to get to know Steve is like trying to understand a bunch of paint thrown on the wall. You see all these different colors and creations, but you have to look at the big picture, and then you get it."

To explain himself, Bigari offers his life verse, Isaiah 40: 30-31: "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run, but not grow weary. They will walk and not grow faint." For Bigari, the meaning is twofold. First, trust in the Lord. Second, don't run from challenges; face them head-on and you'll gain a new perspective, like eagles flying into a storm and rising on the thermal updrafts to 30,000 feet. He gets the big picture from this all-encompassing viewpoint, taking the roofs off his stores, seeing how everything's working -- or not working -- inside.

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"This is the ballet," says Bigari. "The three-lane drive-thru is the ballet of fast food. It requires training, practice and accuracy."

In mid-September, Bigari catches the show outside his McDonald's at Highway 83 and North Academy Boulevard, where he hopes to break the world record for speedy service on October 17. This is one of the three busiest McDonald's stores in the state, he says, and right now he's watching the highest volume of the day, the lunch traffic, go through the drive-thru. A seemingly endless stream of automobiles flows past three side-by-side speaker boxes, merging into one lane as they roll toward the drive-thru window. To Bigari, each rumbling 4x4, each humming sedan, is a ballerina. And he's the choreographer, watching for any missteps, any stumbles, constantly composing new ways to make this dance of metal and meat more graceful.

"10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15..." he counts off the seconds as a customer in a green Ford truck lingers at the drive-thru window, waiting for his meal. Maybe they ran out of plasticware in the kitchen and had to get more from storage. Maybe the order got lost in the shuffle. Whatever, the seconds are adding up -- seconds Bigari can't afford to waste. When the truck finally pulls away, he sighs. "Eight or nine extra seconds. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire."

More than 65 percent of Bigari's sales fly out the window in the form of drive-thru orders. When it comes to maximizing these sales, his mantra of choice is "Capacity begets volume." Or there's the Bigari Field of Dreams corollary: "If you build it, they might come, but if you don't, they definitely won't."