Mr. Big

The call-center concept was bound to spread beyond Colorado Springs. A couple of years ago, Glen Cook, a McDonald's franchisee based in Brainerd, Minnesota, took a look at Bigari's operation. A few months later, Bigari was in Brainerd, listening to the voices of his Colorado Springs call-center employees coming out of Cook's speaker boxes. Soon the call center was also handling drive-thru traffic at stores in Missouri and Massachusetts.

"This country has put in a telecommunications infrastructure that we can take advantage of," says Tengler. "The connections across the country are such that someone in Brainerd, Minnesota, can benefit from this just as much as someone from Boston or Colorado Springs. You can imagine the impact this is going to have on the coasts, where labor is more expensive."

Some bloggers are imagining just that, and they don't like what they see. Under banners decrying "Outsizing at McDonald's!" they're making online predictions that drive-thru call centers will lead to layoffs at fast-food restaurants as a portion of the workload is shipped to parts of the country -- or the world -- where labor costs are the big-business equivalent of an extra-value meal.

Such doomsayers miss the point, according to Bigari. "More dollars means more jobs," he says. "I'm doing so many more transactions, I need that many more people."

He estimates the call center has resulted in about sixty new jobs in his company, including four to five more employees at each restaurant to handle the higher customer volume. In Brainerd, Cook reports similar staff supersizing.

And more jobs could be on the way. Bigari and fellow fast-food visionaries keep cooking up new ways to improve the drive-thru ballet. How about paying for your orders on the go via a speedpass like those used in highway toll booths? How about pre-selected orders on your BlackBerry that can be sent to the restaurant? How about calling the call center on your cell phone before you even get to the store?

"When we figure out cell-phone orders? Ho, ho, ho! You could order across the street!" says Bigari. Still standing outside his restaurant, he convulses with laughter over the possibilities. In the drive-thru lane nearby, drivers turn to watch, momentarily distracted from their flow toward the window.

---

On a warm fall afternoon, Bigari drives his Bermuda Blue Chevrolet Tahoe from one restaurant to the next, talking with his store managers, keeping ahead of the competition.

And burger-and-fries competition is fierce in Colorado Springs. Eric Schlosser chose this town as the focal point of his best-selling polemic on the quick-service industry, Fast Food Nation. Explosive low-density sprawl here led to a local epidemic of chain restaurants, he wrote, making Colorado Springs a bellwether for the industry.

Bigari has not only survived, but flourished in this tough market. (His dozen restaurants account for more than 25 percent of all McDonald's stores within a fifty-mile radius of Colorado Springs, according to www.McDonalds.com.) He's done so by doing what he does best: innovate.

Take the example of Chick-fil-A, Bigari says as he navigates through traffic on North Powers Boulevard. A local Chick-fil-A franchise owner is planning on building a new, "free-stander" restaurant next to Bigari's "big battleship" on Highway 83 and North Academy Boulevard. It's a direct attack -- one that he's not taking lying down.

"They're a wonderful company," says Bigari as he stops at a red light. "But it's my job to put them out of business."

He plans to hit Chick-fil-A where it hurts. Unlike most fast-food companies, Chick-fil-A also does catering. So while this Chick-fil-A franchise owner is busy building a new restaurant, Bigari's going to start his own rival catering business. He's already in discussion with chef Mike Longo, formerly of the Broadmoor Hotel.

A catering company run by a McDonald's franchisee? You can imagine Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's Corporation, rolling over in his grave. Maybe that's why Bigari is hush-hush about the specifics: The head honchos at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, aren't yet aware of his catering plan.

Eighty percent of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by franchise owners. At its core, McDonald's Corporation is a giant landlord: Franchisees are responsible for furnishing and managing their restaurants, while McDonald's owns the land beneath them. For Bigari, the Golden Arches empire is both his benefactor and his watchdog, his springboard and his leash. He enjoys the flexibility of owning a local business while also leveraging the infrastructure, resources and brand name of a global corporation.

Back in 1948, Richard and Maurice "Mac" McDonald were innovators just like Bigari who came up with the strange idea of eliminating their carhops and glassware and turning their burger kitchens into assembly lines. Then came the biggest entrepreneur of them all, Ray Kroc, who had the outrageous idea of taking the McDonald's concept nationwide. And where did such McDonald's staples as the Big Mac, the Filet-O-Fish, the Egg McMuffin and even Ronald McDonald come from? Franchise owners.