While some may still want their classic burgers — two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, as the Big Mac jingle goes — guests now have an option of customizing their own burger.
This is all part of McDonald’s taking a slight step away from fast food to a more casual dining experience.
The Gateway McDonald’s location (200347 84 Ave.) is one of three in Metro Vancouver where guests can now customize their own burger through the Create Your Taste burger concept at self-serve touch screen kiosks— and have it delivered to their table.
It was launched on Wednesday.
“We are always listening to our guests and looking for new ways to innovate our food (and) raise the experience for our guests,” explained Shelly Hansen, the vice-president for the west region for McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada.
This particular idea has been about a year in the works.
“We have been going through a brand transformation for the past six years.”
“I think the changes we are embarking on and our future vision for our guests are our boldest move yet.”
“This is the next natural evolution for us and we are going to deliver a guest experience that we feel is going to be very difficult to match in the industry,” she added.
Guests who want to customize their own burgers — which are cooked to order — go to a self-serve kiosk where they can choose between the 29 different options, including five types of cheese, a dozen toppings, two buns, a lettuce wrap and nine sauces.
The burgers takes roughly seven minutes to prepare.
As part of the changes, some of the new positions include someone to greet guests at the door, a guest experiences leader, and the cooks, who will be solely responsible for creating the customized burgers.
“We chose this location because the great staff we have here, and it is also one of our restaurants that has all the items from the brand transformation,” Hansen said.
This location opened last November.
“I am excited; I have seen the returns from our brand transformations in 2010 and it is really building the business and this will take us to the next level,” said Joe Guzzo, a McDonald’s franchisee owner who was on hand for the launch.
“We evolved the interior earlier and now we are evolving the experience.”
The modernized restaurant and guest experience is expected to create at least 45 new positions across the three Metro Vancouver locations which are offering the service — the other two are in Surrey and Vancouver — with 10 to 15 additional jobs per restaurant.
This will be implemented at other McDonald’s locations between now and 2017.
“This is all leading up and building to our 50th anniversary for McDonald’s, which will be in 2017,” Hansen explained.
“By the time we reach that period, we will have added 15,000 jobs across Canada.”
That would also put the number of McDonald’s employees up to 100,000 coast-to-coast.