McDonald’s makeover in works
100 restaurants in Arkansas to get $69M high-tech upgrades
About 100 McDonald’s restaurants in Arkansas are getting a $69 million makeover that isn’t just skin deep.
It is part of a $6 billion investment nationwide by McDonald’s Corp. and its franchisees to modernize the 78-year-old restaurant chain synonymous with fast food and engage more with techsavvy consumers.
The changes include new dining rooms and refreshed exteriors and installing digital self-order kiosks and new digital menu boards inside and at the drive-through. The restaurants also will have designated parking spaces for curbside pickup for people who order and pay with their cellphones.
David Stokes, president of the ArkLATex co-op, which represents 176 restaurants in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas and the owner of 11 McDonald’s restaurants in Conway, Faulkner, Lonoke and White counties, said the investment in technology is a recognition that the way customers buy and consume has changed.
“We recognize … that times change and evolve,” the Cabot resident said in an interview Tuesday. “We all grew up with the old McDonald’s look but as times have changed, it’s a more modernized look, a more modernized lobby, the ability to use technology, which is a big player now and into the future.
“We just need to be able to meet the customers where they’re at. That’s where they’re increasingly going to. We want to be seamless and able to meet whatever need the customer might have and technology is a big, big piece of that.”
The kiosks, which already are available at some restaurants in central Arkansas, “will allow customers to move at their own pace and not be rushed or hurried,”
advice from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and private-equity firm Silver Lake and has lined up legal advisers. But Goldman Sachs hadn’t been formally tapped as a financial adviser at the time, according to people familiar with the matter. Musk said earlier that Saudi Arabia first approached him with interest in helping take Tesla private early last year.
Musk has said in blog posts that Tesla being public has forced the company to focus on short-term decisions that aren’t consistent with its longterm goals, and that he thinks going private would help the car maker to operate at its best.
“The bears are dug in, the bulls are dug in, and so the public markets aren’t really functioning properly, or as they should,” James Albertine, an analyst with a buy rating on the shares, said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television. Private stakeholders would be able to “share in that long-term view with Elon and it would be a lot less volatile.”
Shares of
Tesla fell 2.46 percent to close at $347.64 on Tuesday in New York.
The stock remains well below the $420 level at which
Musk has said existing shareholders could be bought out if they choose, underscoring investor skepticism that the deal is doable.
While Tesla considers Buss to be an independent director, major proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis don’t because he served as the chief financial officer of solar energy services firm SolarCity Corp. before Tesla acquired the company in 2016.
Denholm is the chief operating officer of Telstra Corp., Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Tesla labels Buss and Denholm as the board’s financial experts on its investor-relations website.
Rice, chairman of Johnson Publishing Co., long known for Ebony magazine, is one of the two newest directors on the
board. Tesla appointed her and James Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive officer of 21st Century Fox Inc., to the board in July 2017. Johnson Publishing sold Ebony in 2016, retaining its Fashion Fair Cosmetics business.
Rice was on the board of directors for Bausch & Lomb Inc. when it was acquired by Warburg Pincus in 2007 and for Quaker Oats Co. when it was bought by PepsiCo Inc. in 2001.
None of the three committee members could be reached for comment.
With Musk recused, brother Kimbal Musk not independent, and director Stephen Jurvetson on leave, the board had only six members to choose from for its committee. Lead director Antonio Gracias, chief investment officer of Valor Equity management, presumably would have been eligible, along with Murdoch and venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis.
The Tesla board’s special committee has hired Latham & Watkins for legal counsel and plans to retain an independent financial adviser to
assist its review, according to the statement. The company has separately retained Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati for legal counsel.
Silver Lake’s aim is to invest in the car maker as part of its potential delisting, which could be worth tens of billions of dollars, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. The firm is not going to be paid for any work it does to help the Tesla co-founder explore his options, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations.
Senior executives of Silver Lake, one of the biggest technology-focused privateequity investors, have known Musk for years and have had him speak at an annual meeting of its portfolio companies on at least one occasion. An arm of the firm, Silver Lake Kraftwerk, had invested $100 million in SolarCity, the solarpower company that Musk co-founded and is now part of Tesla.
Information for this article was contributed by Tiffany Hsu and Michael J. de la Merced of