Renovations Can Rev Up Your Business

In yesterday’s blog, we discussed a recent report that revealed that the mighty fast food chain McDonald’s will be spending upwards of $1 billion on renovating all of its Canadian restaurants. Wow! That’s a lot of money. And that’s a lot of restaurants. Reports have noted that there are about 1,400 McDonald’s restaurants in the country.

One article from The Canadian Press announced that leather furniture, plasma televisions and fireplaces would be replacing the plastic seats and childlike colour scheme that has made the fast food restaurant so popular with children for decades. The exteriors of the restaurants will also be getting makeovers as the red roofs of McDonald’s stores are apparently out.

A similar facelift for the chain’s American locations is also in the works. So on the heels of this information, we felt it necessary, here at Synergy Merchant Services, to remind our great clients that no business is either too small or too big to renovate. In fact, we had this very discussion with one of our clients yesterday.

“I found that renovating my store was just what I needed,” remarked this entrepreneur, “The fresh look gave my business a fresh start. Customers made comments about how much nicer it looked and this sparked up a lot of conversation. I found that many new customers were coming in mentioning that someone had told them about the changes at my business.”

Word-of-mouth promotion, as many of us know, is the best type of advertising. When other customers are talking about your business, it provides the most honest feedback about your brand. Renovations have long been known to convey that your company is “hip to the game”, “with it”, “forward moving” and “on top of things”.

McDonald’s, it seems, wishes to convey all of the above. The restaurant chain realizes that customers who visit restaurants don’t just come in for the food. The atmosphere has a lot to do with the dining experience. The CEO of McDonald’s Canada, John Betts spoke about this in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Said Betts: “People tend to linger a little bit more in restaurants today. They want to enjoy their meals take a break from the busy lifestyle that they lead and we think our restaurants today are certainly doing that a lot better than in the past…The business we’ve been enjoying from our reimaged restaurants or remodelled restaurants is close to double digits.”