Sunday, June 24, 2007

The McCafe

The mess hall is on the early breakfast schedule again, so we had Burger King. When we first moved here, Wee Laddie was getting up earlier in the morning, and the brunch schedule (9:30 start) was too late for us. Now the early one (6-8:30) is too early, ‘cause we can’t even get there by 8:30. Sometimes even the 8:30-9:30 time is too early for us!

So this weekend, we had the breakfast-lunch fastfood two-fer that we avoided last week. The McDonald’s had fully reopened, so we went there. God we’re pathetic. I would actually love to go to the döner shop at times like this, but for some reason, Guitarman finds it very awkward and doesn’t like to go there very often. I thought it was going to be our “next best thing” to Chipotle, since it’s cheap and pretty healthy. But alas.

At any rate, they have completely revamped the McDonald’s near us… it’s now a McCafe. It’s actually kind of swanky-looking inside. It’s got a coffee counter (and even had paninis on the menu in that section!) and had a 4-sided fireplace and everything. I’ve seen the swankier McD’s on TV, but never in person.

Went to Schweinfurt and Würzburg to look for the photo book for Cheryl. Schweinfurt didn’t have it, but they do have a Taco Bell, so that was good. Finally found the photo book at Würzburg. I wanted a 5x7 size and they had exactly one. Whew. I’d have picked up an extra if they’d had any more… I didn’t want to commit to an 8x10 book, which they did have a few of.

At Würzburg we were toy shopping a bit. Wee Laddie, rather than his usual, “I want that. Wee Laddie wants that,” spiel, was trying out, “I’ll use that.” You can picture it, I’m sure: He points at a toy and says, “I want that.” Mama says, “It’s for babies, sweetie. You’ll never use it.” I think toddlers are hard-wired to be little manipulation machines.

1 comment:

John G said...

It's funny to see commentary on the new McCafés. I was doing work recently for the agency that does all of McDonald's online marketing. We developed a new design for the German website that should be showing up sometime within the next few months.

I really like the changes they have made. I felt like McDonald's was stuck in kind of a 70's design for so long and this introduction of McCafé is really a breath of fresh air.

Apparently, the restaurants that have added McCafés are doing lots of business. At first, most restaurants were skeptical and didn't want to add this new coffee shop. But, since a few restaurants have had such good success, most want to add them now.

Interestingly, there are now more McCafés in Germany than Starbucks...