Mr. Big

But if McDonald's was founded by iconoclasts, it didn't get where it is today by letting every franchisee go hog wild. The key to McDonald's success is that the food is the same everywhere. A Quarter Pounder is a Quarter Pounder is a Quarter Pounder, whether you're in Anchorage or Miami or Maine. And to ensure this, a franchise must follow thousands of rules and procedures. The operation manual is hundreds of pages thick, detailing everything from the thickness of fries to the size of each pickle slice. Needless to say, that doesn't leave much room for creativity -- which is exactly the way Kroc wanted it.

"We cannot trust some people who are non-conformists. We will make conformists out of them in a hurry," Kroc once said. "The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization."

The very individualistic Bigari acknowledges that not everyone in Oak Brook has been keen on his inventions. And he wishes the company had moved faster after he came up with the drive-thru call-center idea in 2002. "Three years in a corporate life cycle is pretty fast. It seems like an eternity to me," he confesses. "My only disappointment is that if we as an organization had moved ahead faster, we may have precluded other brands from getting this."

Other fast-food chains will be unveiling their own versions of drive-thru call centers very soon. Exit41's Tengler chooses his words carefully. "It's the balance of innovation and scale that all big companies wrestle with," he says. "This was a very controversial technology, from a provider not approved by McDonald's. If I'm running an enterprise with 13,000 stores, the best way to make sure everybody is on the same road is to make sure nobody diverts themselves."

After struggling with stagnating revenues, McDonald's Corp. has made a much-publicized turnaround over the past few years. The public face of this upswing is the "I'm Lovin' It" campaign and healthier menu choices. But the real transformation, says Bigari, has come from deep within the corporation. "In my eighteen years' experience with the brand, it was the first time we [owner/operators] were able to participate in the day-to-day decision-making," he points out. "And that changed everything."

Earlier this year, McDonald's Corporation announced that it was running its own drive-thru call-center test. By the end of next year, the Exit41 software in Bigari's restaurants will be replaced by a version developed by McDonald's Corp. If the concept goes nationwide, Oak Brook could buy out Bigari's call center.

That would be okay with him. He'll continue to dream up new ways to make fast-food faster, but in the meantime, he's got bigger potatoes to fry.

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If you could walk around inside Steve Bigari's head, your trip might look like Mr. Biggs' Family Fun Center.

A warehouse-sized building just off I-25 in Colorado Springs, Mr. Biggs' is 152,000 square feet of bright colors, booming rock and roll, high-speed electronics and stuff that's big, big, big. There's the laser-gun attack on a downed alien starship, a post-apocalyptic go-kart track, an acid-dipped croquet game, a foam cannonball-spewing pirate ship, a hair boutique, a theater space, a bowling alley, a Funky Junky Chow House restaurant, a Chez Biggs gourmet eatery and a host of other sense-jiggling activities in "the biggest little town around."

Bigari didn't plan on building the largest family center in Colorado Springs. (And he swears he wasn't the inspiration for its mascot, Mr. Biggs, who looks like Mr. Clean after too much time in Jamaica.) He actually just wanted to move his corporate offices when he bought a property that was too large for his operations. So Bigari thought big. Very big. Since he opened Mr. Biggs' on the site last March, he's drawn tens of thousands of visitors and started talk of turning it into a chain.

"Mr. Biggs' is an afterthought," he says, pushing open a door that leads out of the candy-colored clamor of the fun center and into a maze of offices that are the Bigari Food Enterprises headquarters. "It's all just hiding my fascination in life, which is the working poor."

For years, Bigari has struggled with the idea of helping the working poor, people like his father, people like those who staff his front counters and call center. "There are 39 million working poor in this country," he says. "It's a systemic economic failure. I want to help overcome that."

Critics of the fast-food industry, including Fast Food Nation's Eric Schlosser, point out that the sector pays some of the lowest wages and offers the worst benefit packages. "Eric got it wrong; it's that simple," responds Bigari. "McDonald's is a powerful tool. Great brands like McDonald's can be used for tremendous good, or they can be manipulated for tremendous wrong. All he sees is what's been done wrong, and he's failed to see the power of being able to act responsibly."