McDonald's Express, Quince Road, Memphis, TN

Today's post highlights Shelby County, TN, retail.

"McNames abound in the McDonald's vernacular," begins a 1995 Chicago Tribune article. "There aren't too many McMonikers that consumers can't identify."

By the 1990s, McDonald's, of course, was already a household name. Their iconic double-mansard roof restaurants were instantly recognizable, and dotted the nation's – nay, the world's – landscape. But iconic though they were, McDonald's still wasn't quite everywhere. Sure, maybe geographically they were – or close to it, anyway. But what about that McDonald's down the street, attached to the gas station? Or the one that used to be in your local Wal-Mart? Those McDonald's didn't exist yet; until the 1990s, McDonald's largely relied on standalone locations only.

Today's post is the story of how that changed.

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Before we get going, I owe a big "McThanks" to my flickr comrade Coolcat4333 (who is also proprietor of the blog East Coast Retail) for the inspiration for this post. Coolcat recently posted several images of a strange-looking McDonald's bearing the name "McDonald's Express," along with some information on how that location is so tiny it doesn't even serve certain mainstay menu items such as Quarter Pounders and iced coffees. Naturally, I was intrigued, and decided to research a little further to see what I could find about this mysterious operating concept. Lo and behold, one of the first hits Google brought me was an October 1991 Los Angeles Times article entitled "Here's Your Hamburger, What's Your Hurry?":

The McDonald's restaurant taking shape near the Navy Exchange building at the 32nd Street Naval Station in San Diego will feature the fast-food chain's fabled golden arches, Chicken McNuggets, assorted burgers and french fries. 

But, unlike other McDonald's, this small, prefabricated metal building will have no indoor seating. 

Instead, patrons will be served at a drive-through and two walk-up windows--and they'll select their meals from a decidedly slimmed-down menu that won't include milkshakes, Quarter Pounders or a handful of other items sold at the thousands of McDonald's elsewhere in the country. 

The 630-square-foot McDonald's Express, which was trucked in from Los Angeles on Monday, is a prototype of others that might be built elsewhere ... The prefabricated buildings are designed for locations where most customers are buying food for off-site consumption.

All of this was already golden – I knew I'd stumbled upon a subject for a new Lost History post – but the next paragraph was what excited me the most:

The building, which measures 14 feet by 45 feet, will become the seventh McDonald's Express in the country when it opens in early November. The others are in Akron, Ohio; Baton Rouge, La.; Atlanta and Memphis.

Yep, you read that correctly – Memphis was home to one of the very first McDonald's Express restaurants! So not only did McDonald's Express present me with a short-lived concept worth shining light on, it also had a local connection to the Mid-South, too. Could things get any better?! Well... what if I told you the Memphis McDonald's Express was still operating? :)

Obviously, we'll explore that later on in this post, but first, I want to continue spending some time on the history of this concept and how it, and the thinking it fostered within McDonald's corporate, resulted in a slew of other, longer-lasting/wider-reaching concepts that had ramifications not just for the golden arches but for the industry as a whole.

McDonald's Express logo sign. Courtesy eBay

My research next took me to the Commercial Appeal archives, to try and dig up information on Memphis's McDonald's Express specifically. Readers don't have free access to any full articles from the archives, but the search option does give you the first several paragraphs of any given article's text. Sure enough, I found this story from July 31, 1991:

Fast Food - McDonald's Planning Express Site 

McDonald's is erecting a modular drive-through, walk-up restaurant called McDonald's Express at Perkins and Quince to try to win back customers. 

It is McDonald's first double drive-through in Tennessee. It is to open by September. The unit, which will be less than 900 square feet, will feature a limited menu. 

It will have a few picnic tables in front of the store for folks who walk up to place orders and two drive-through bays for car-bound customers.

A November follow-up article further explained McDonald's reasoning for introducing McDonald's Express to the Memphis market:

McDonald's Joins Faster Fast-Food Race 

You could call it a Little Mac, but McDonald's Corp. calls it McDonald's Express. 

And the new drive-through-only restaurant is part of the fast-food giant's strategy for recapturing market share lost to others in the fast-growing niche. 

The McDonald's Express at Perkins and Quince, the first in Tennessee for the company, opened in September, joining Back Yard Burger, Central Park, Rally's Hamburgers and soon-to-open Checkers in the double-drive-through business locally.

In other words, in Memphis the primary purpose of McDonald's Express was to try and compete with a horde of double-drive-thru newcomers whose new operating style was stealing business from existing McDonald's locations. Originating in the 1980s, the double-drive-thru concept allowed these chains to find success from lower start-up costs and lower operational costs due to the smaller size of the buildings and their prefabricated nature, savings which were then passed on to consumers with prices so low – "about 30 percent below that of the major chains" – that they began to make the "traditional" fast food joints look expensive.

This model was evidently very popular in the Mid-South; as noted in the above excerpt, Checkers (like McDonald's Express) joined the already-crowded area scene in 1991, and by 1994 ceded its seven local locations to competitor Rally's – who had ten locations locally – as part of a larger swap between the two chains involving seven total cities that was poised to "eliminate competition between the firms in various markets." (The two would wind up merging together into a singular entity just a few years later, in 1999.) McDonald's, it seems, opted to take the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach in making their decision to enter the fray.

It would seem later double-drive-thru/walk-up McDonald's locations were branded as "Mini Mac" instead of McDonald's Express. Image source unknown

But while in Memphis the McDonald's Express concept may simply have been to up their game against the other double-drive-thru burger chains, elsewhere in the country the goal of McDonald's Express was to interject McDonald's into every facet of consumers' lives: per the book Food Justice, "an overall 'convenience strategy' designed, as McDonald's put it, to 'have a site wherever people live, work, shop, play, and gather' in order to 'intercept them at every turn.'"

So, you know, just regular old casual world domination... but it worked.

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McDonald's quickly expanded its Express concept to Manhattan, introducing in 1994 "plans to blitz New York with its smaller Express restaurants to increase its presence." Entering these so-called secondary markets (secondary, that is, to areas where its full-size restaurants already operated), McDonald's claimed, would allow it to "fill in the seams of our operations" and gain better exposure in order to place the product closer to the consumer – a philosophy that, experts said, would result in increased sales. Not all McDonald's Express outlets were double-drive-thrus – clearly, this would be next to impossible in Manhattan! – but instead varied in format depending on the location, with some indeed featuring indoor seating, albeit limited in number compared to full-size restaurants. The main takeaway, the Manhattan McDonald's Express franchisee said, was that McDonald's Express allowed McDonald's "smaller square footage and more lease flexibility," which in turn generated higher returns for both the operator and the corporation.

The one constant of all McDonald's Express locations was the limited menu, mainly due to the space limitations. "Milkshakes won't be served, for example, because there's no room for the shake machines. And Quarter Pounders will have to go because there isn't enough room for the storage and preparation of the McDonald's mainstay," reads the 1991 LA Times article I referenced earlier. "Neither is there room for the machines that generate frozen yogurt and ice cream products. Instead, the Express will offer 'novelty ice cream products like Dove or Snickers bars.'" But initial concerns about customers' reactions to these menu exclusions, franchisees relayed, were surprisingly waved away. "People don't seem to mind. I've heard of no complaints about the menu. The customers already know that there is something different because of the different signage."

Stock photo of a McDonald's Express in Harlem. Courtesy Alamy

Perhaps the infamous 1990s "lightning script" logo originated from the McDonald's Express concept? Compare the "Express" swoosh in this image to the one featured on the awning in the above image. Courtesy Yelp

Buoyed by seeming success, McDonald's Express continued expanding nationwide, "setting up shop anywhere and everywhere there is sufficient traffic." This policy allowed the chain to "squeeze into locations not ordinarily associated with fast food restaurants," including mall food courts, military bases, airports, hospitals, schools, office buildings, sports arenas – you name it. In 1998, there was even an effort to turn an abandoned bathroom in a Bronx park into a McDonald's Express. (That deal fell through, but the space did eventually become home to a Wendy's.)

From there, McDonald's sights only broadened. In the decade prior, McDonald's had experimented with both larger- and smaller-scale concepts, including the McStop ("a 30-acre site that will house not only one of its restaurants, but also a motel, gas station and convenience store") and the McSnack (an extremely tiny format designed for high-foot-traffic areas that was so small it didn't even serve hamburgers or fries). But with McDonald's Express, the company seemed to have found its sweet spot in size, and as such felt increasingly emboldened to introduce McDonald's Express outlets into even more nontraditional sites. Notably, in 1993 it was announced that "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is test-marketing scaled-down versions of McDonald's restaurants in its stores in Fresno and Visalia, Calif." – a partnership that soon grew into McDonald's becoming, for a time, "the exclusive in-store restaurateur for Wal-Mart," with over 1,000 in-store units in the US and locations in every Wal-Mart store in Canada. McDonald's also opened multiple in-store units in several Home Depots, Meijers, and other retail chains.

Example of an older McDonald's inside Wal-Mart. Image source unknown

"McDonald's in Wal-Mart" logo pin, dated 1994. McDonald's was in over 100 Wal-Marts by August 1995, and over 800 by November 1996. Courtesy eBay

Likewise, McDonald's quickly jumped onto the gas station bandwagon, seeing dollar signs in the idea of pairing a McDonald's Express with a fueling center in order to create a one-stop shop. By late 1995, McDonald's had struck deals with an A-list of gas station/C-store operators – Chevron, Mobil, BP, Texaco, Shell, and finally Amoco – for regional alliances that would result in co-branded retail operations that, ideally, would increase profits for both parties. Projections estimated that McDonald's and its two largest partners, Amoco and Chevron, would develop about 300 fuel center/McDonald's Express combos a year.

Images of two "McDonald's Oil Alliance" locations, the Chevron in Dalhart, Texas, and the Amoco in Chicago, Illinois. Note how the architecture for both is virtually identical. Courtesy Kendrick Development

Pins featuring the "McDonald's Express & Amoco" branding and the "McDonald's & Chevron" branding, respectively. I may or may not own these now :)  Courtesy eBay

To be sure, McDonald's wasn't necessarily the first to experiment with opening scaled-down restaurants in all of these nontraditional venues. In fact, McDonald's was reportedly driven by Taco Bell, owned in the 1990s by PepsiCo and which "led the way by selling its Mexican food from kiosks in shopping malls, tiny outlets in convenience stores and in school lunch programs." Years before McDonald's partnership with Amoco, Burger King teamed up with the gas station brand in 1991 to open what was hailed as "the first operation where motorists can pump gas while ordering food," and Wendy's led the pack before anybody by opening one of its restaurants inside a Kmart in 1985.

But, arguably, McDonald's was the one to take all of these experiments farther than the rest, and make the partnerships feel mainstream. After all, these days it's not unusual in the slightest to see a travel center featuring a gas station paired with well-known national fast food brands, or an in-store restaurant such as Subway inside Walmart or Starbucks inside, well, everything. But in the 90s, these concepts were entirely new to consumers – and McDonald's paved the way in making them commonplace, all evolving from its McDonald's Express concept. I guess you could say that McDonald's Express led to a new way of McLife.

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Despite the optimism and high expectations concerning the growth and expansion of McDonald's Express, soon the glow began to wear off. Initially, McDonald's Express units were offered only "to franchisees of successful traditional units." In turn, "each Express restaurant becomes a satellite of an existing McDonald's under the same franchisee. Storage space, lacking in the smaller outlets, is provided at the full-size restaurant."

But as corporate pushed the concept further, they became more involved in its implementation, effectively pushing the franchisees aside – and worse, eating into their business. "Consider franchisee Wayne Kilburn," reads a November 1996 Forbes profile:

In 1980 he and his wife, Mary Jane, took over the sole McDonald's in Ridgecrest, Calif., a high-desert town of 26,000 about an hour west of Death Valley. Kilburn turned the restaurant into a huge profit machine. Then McDonald's came up with a market share plan for Ridgecrest. In September 1995 it put a company-owned restaurant inside the new Wal-Mart in town. Late last year McDonald's built another outlet inside the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. A third new company-owned store went up right outside the naval base. 

"Basically, they killed me," says Kilburn. He claims his volume has dropped by 30%. Kilburn, who doubts that...his volume [will be restored] to its prior peaks, wants out and is now negotiating to sell his franchise back to the corporation. The two parties will probably end up reaching a deal.

A February 1997 article from Crain's Chicago Business – titled "McD-Amoco Venture is Low on Gas" – echoes the above sentiment, writing, "The loudest gripes are coming from McDonald's franchisees and Amoco and Chevron station operators who are in business near combination sites. They complain about sales cannibalization, saying the higher traffic at the combo stores eats sales from stand-alone restaurants or gas stations that are sometimes only blocks away."

Accordingly, McDonald's and its oil alliance partners began "putting the brakes on [their] ambitious plans to fuse fast food with fast gas." Originally projected to have "2,000 such restaurant/gas station combinations by 2000," at the time of publication in 1997 "only 117 combination stores are open (67 of them Amoco/McDonald's sites) and a handful have been or will be closed." In addition to the franchisee cannibalization complications and industry observer claims that "the satellite restaurants in combination C-store/gas stations are posting mixed results and risk diluting the powerful McDonald's brand," according to Crain's, "Corporate identities were at stake, too":

At the time the deals were inked, McDonald's Chairman and CEO Michael Quinlan lauded the concept as a "key driver of growth." What he didn't count on, however, are logistics and egos ... Much time and effort was spent debating whose sign should go on top. 

"We're both very protective of our brands," explains Amoco's Edward Hoffman. "They have very strong opinions on how they want to present their brand, and so do we... It hasn't been an easy process." 

Most signs at the sites now sit side-by-side. Maintenance costs are shared, but McDonald's -- with more stringent rules on cleanliness because it handles uncooked food -- usually takes control. 

Coffee and dispensed-soda sales at the linked gas stations -- a traffic generator for Amoco and Chevron -- are not allowed when the McDonald's side is open. Cigarettes and beer are not sold near the McDonald's side of the complex, nor are they prominently displayed.

Another example of a co-branded Amoco/McDonald's location. Looks like the McDonald's sign won out in the battle for whose sign should go on top at this one! Image source unknown

Eventually, the McDonald's Express branding faded away, making it a perfect Lost History subject for today's world. While McDonald's located in gas stations are still common nowadays, I'm not certain they have exclusive partnerships like they did with Chevron or Amoco any longer (and Amoco, of course, merged with BP in 1998, then proceeded to disappear as a brand for over a decade beginning in 2004). Assuming any Wal-Mart in-store McDonald's locations bore the "Express" designation in the first place, that tagline was likely simply dropped at some point along the way (regardless of whether or not the menu was full-sized or limited), similar to how the Walmart of today makes no distinction between its normal stores and its Supercenters. In fact, many Wal-Mart McDonald's have since closed, as have a very large number of individual McDonald's Express locations around the country. Crain's suggests this trend away from McDonald's Express began as early as 1997, a mere six years after the concept was first introduced:

A "mini-McDonald's" offering limited menu items did not work. Many of those sites have been shuttered, including one in south suburban New Lenox (part of a broader shutdown of more than 100 kiosks and other smaller venues announced last month). 

"Customers want the full McDonald's experience," says a McDonald's spokeswoman.

Long-term survival of the brand or not, McDonald's Express is emblematic of the corporation's attitude of experimentation in the final decades of the twentieth century. Even more obscure than these "small fry" McDonald's concepts I've been discussing are short-lived full-blown diner-style restaurants that were tested in various cities, including Hearth Express, Golden Arch Café, and the McDiner. On the other end of the spectrum, consumers likely remember plenty of new menu items McDonald's toyed with in the 80s and 90s, including the Arch Deluxe, the McDLT, the McLean Deluxe, burritos and fajitas, and of course, the McPizza. That early McDonald's Express at the naval base in San Diego was even poised to serve hot dogs and chili, in another departure from the norm for the already-radical new concept.

The McPizza. Enough said. Courtesy MentalFloss

For what it's worth, this era was also when McDonald's began to increasingly convert and occupy "unusual existing buildings," such as a former savings and loan building in Minnesota and a railroad caboose in New York. A lot of those locations – as well as other locations with otherwise normal exteriors, but uniquely-themed interiors – are endangered these days, as McDonald's pushes its franchisees to remodel all locations to a much blander design. Perhaps at least part of the reasoning behind this is that McDonald's doesn't feel it needs to experiment or be unique anymore; they've finally achieved that status discussed earlier where they are, in fact, intercepting consumers at every turn. Likewise, the persistent menu additions seem to have largely disappeared; by now, everyone knows what McDonald's is, what it serves, where to find it, and what to expect – is this complacency? I'll leave that up to you all to decide. For now, though, I'll link you to two flickr photostreams: those of RetailRyan and The Caldor Rainbow, who have been traveling to and documenting various unique McDonald's locations before they are inevitably remodeled beyond recognition.

As a final note before we move on to the next portion of this post, I wanted to briefly reference an article I came across in my research, published just last month in the UK:

McDonald's is launching new mini outlets with a reduced menu so it can serve meals faster. 

The first has opened on Fleet Street in London, and the focus on takeaways means there is no in-store seating. 

All customers in the so-called "McDonald’s to Go" stores must order via a touchscreen. 

A more limited menu of favourites such as Big Macs, McNuggets and Big Flavour Wraps will mean staff can have more of them ready at peak times. 

McDonald’s is trialling the new format ahead of rolling it out to other town and city centres where there is likely to be demand. 

Sound familiar? The more things change... :)

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So finally, after that lengthy written Lost History component, we arrive at the titular focus of this post: the still-operating, original McDonald's Express in Memphis. Located at 4657 Quince Road, it would stand to reason that this restaurant has been operational since 1991, the year it opened as part of the first group of seven McDonald's Express stores. I visited the restaurant just shy of a month ago, on August 30, 2019. My photos follow.

We begin with a handful of shots taken while driving past on the roadway, as we approached the restaurant. Given the size and layout of the lot, I had already anticipated that getting on-property photos of the front of the building would be a challenge. Unfortunately for us, the front of the building is, as ever, a majorly-important part, so I hope you'll forgive any objects that impede its visibility in my images.

Some closer shots of the front of the restaurant reveal that, aside from it being miniaturized and having a walk-up window instead of a front door, the facade looks amazingly similar to your regular mansard roof McDonald's of that era. This in turn sadly means that there is no actual "Express" branding on the building itself, but in all honesty even the mansard alone is becoming rare these days, so I won't complain about seeing it still intact here.

At the corner of the property – located at the intersection of Quince and S Perkins – stands the tall roadside sign, bearing the golden arches. But look closely – that's actually McDonald's Express branding on there! It was very exciting to be able to see this in person, with the knowledge that this is actually a remnant of a widespread past concept as opposed to just a strange one-off sign.

Because I wanted to get those drive-by pics of the property, we had to circle back around a bit before entering the lot, which resulted in me getting these two pics of nearby retail sights as well. On top is a shot of the shopping center located directly behind the McDonald's Express, featuring a Superlo Foods and a now-shuttered Fred's (the final Fred's in Memphis to retain vintage signage similar to what we saw at the Munford franchise location). Below that is a pic of the also now-shuttered Rite Aid located directly across the street from the McDonald's Express. It crossed my mind that, if the franchisee were interested, he or she could probably purchase the Rite Aid property, tear down the building, and construct a brand-new, full-size McDonald's on the lot, replacing the existing Express location. Hopefully, of course, that doesn't happen, but with the possibility out there I'm even more glad I visited when I did!

(And yes, speaking of Fred's... I'm sure you're all expecting a post from me on their recently-announced bankruptcy and decision to wind down operations. Your wish will be granted next month...)

Entering the property, since my main goal was to explore the place and take some pictures for y'all, naturally we parked instead of going through one of the drive-thru lanes. The parking lot is fairly small – although it does have a larger footprint than the building itself! – and is located off to the right side of the restaurant. This can be better seen in the aerial view of the property. Google Maps also provides some pretty good Street View coverage of this place, including historical imagery showing that the building retained the classic white and red paint scheme until circa 2017.

Nowadays, the building is beige in color, as seen behind this vintage McDonald's logo affixed to the building's right side wall (facing the parking lot). But that seems to have been the only change on the property in recent years, with everything up to and including the Express road sign and the mini-mansard roof left alone, so let's hope things stay that way!

To emulate the view as one travels down the drive-thru lane along this side of the building, I took these shots of the menu board and the patio forming the border between the building/drive-thrus and the parking lot. I didn't walk over to the other side for a similar view of the second drive-thru lane, so I've pulled an image of that from Google and included it below.

Courtesy Google Maps

Per that Google user image of the other drive-thru lane, it would appear only this parking lot-facing side of the building has one of these vintage structure-affixed McDonald's logos. These always look a lot older than they really are (at least, in my opinion). Still, though, it's great to see this one still here. I just wish those shrubs in front of it weren't blocking it so much!

We ordered from the walk-up window, and while there I snapped this shot of the menu available for customers to browse and select from. For one thing, you can compare the presentation of this menu to the one shown on the considerably larger drive-thru board earlier in this post; but for another, you can see from either menu pic that, contrary to what I told y'all of McDonald's Express's origins, this restaurant does not appear to be serving a limited menu – note the presence of Quarter Pounders and shakes, among other things. Evidently, the restaurant's capabilities over the years have been increased, which of course is beneficial.

A fun fact I uncovered in my research is the discovery by a handful of folks that remaining McDonald's Express units, for several years past the "official" replacement of fried pies with baked pies on the menu, continued to serve fried pies, because the Express outlets did not have ovens in which to bake the pies in accordance with the new recipe. The menu at the Memphis McDonald's Express did indeed have pies on it, but alas, I wasn't hungry enough when we visited to order one (all I got was some fries). But several of those reports had been updated more recently to say the Express stores, too, finally switched over to the baked recipe, so I don't think I was missing anything.

Courtesy Google Maps

Courtesy Google Maps

These next two images again come to us courtesy of Google user contributions. I chose to include them because they show things I wasn't able to capture on my visit. Up top is a shot of the McDonald's storefront sign lit up at night, which I thought looked neat. And below that is a quick peek inside the restaurant from one of the service windows. I got a quick peek in through the walk-up window, of course, but I didn't feel comfortable taking a photo through it. In any case, whether or not it's clearly visible in the photo, you can imagine that the interior of a McDonald's Express unit is considerably more compact in layout than a regular McDonald's Kitchen.

Probably my favorite two shots of the whole post, right here :)  Up first is as good of a wide view as I could get of the entire restaurant, and below that is a close-up of the iconic mansard roof with its yellow french fry lights and the McDonald's logotype. Again, it may not say "Express" directly on the building, but this is still cool in its own right, especially as more and more of these similar rooflines disappear!

The front of the property featured the traditional arrow-pointing "enter" and "exit" signs, as well as this more unique "Thank You" sign posted at the end of the left-side drive-thru lane. In hindsight, I should've gotten a closer shot of at least one of the enter/exit signs as well, but it is what it is. Who knows, maybe I'll be back again someday to remedy that :)

Here's the view from the "front porch" of the restaurant, as it were, over toward the roadside McDonald's Express sign at the corner of the property, followed by a closer shot of said sign. Note that the "Express" logo used here is different from the one seen in other applications earlier in this post, with sentence case letters and dashes running through the letters themselves (as opposed to running along the left side of the letters). Personally, I think I like this one better.

Some more close-ups of the McDonald's Express sign (actually just crops of previous images, but don't tell my readers that!). Unfortunately one side of the sign's face has been slightly damaged – but thankfully not so badly as to necessitate replacement (knock on wood!)...

Returning to our car, I snapped some full-building views along the way, which I think capture the layout of the property pretty nicely. I also discovered that I inadvertently captured an employee delivering a meal to a customer waiting in a parking space (you can even see them driving away, in the last pic!) – so apparently even this McDonald's Express features curbside delivery, just like all the full-size locations! Pretty neat...

These three successive pics show the scene as we drove away. They're kinda repetitive in nature, but I included all three of them anyway. Something I was curious about was the umbrellas over the patio tables... to me, those look like they could be fairly recent (for some reason the yellow/teal color scheme gives me this impression), but Street View shows them here as far back as the imagery goes (2007), and it's quite possible they had been here for years before that, too, perhaps even back to this restaurant's 1991 opening. Wish there was a way to find out for sure...

I tried to get a good shot of the front of the building as we drove past, but that's kinda hard to do from a car window with sun glare also interfering! Oh well, at least it turned out much better than it would have with my old phone (oh yeah – forgot to mention, I have a new phone now! I think these are the first photos from it that you're seeing on the blog; more will come in the future, of course).

One final interesting thing I wanted to note is the setup of the parking lot-facing drive-thru lane here. As you can see, the pick-up window is located at the front of the building, but the menu board where you place your order is located at the rear (as we saw earlier). That means that when customers use the drive-thru on this side, they have to reach all the way over from their driver's seat, across the passenger seat, in order to reach the window. Who on earth thought that was a good idea?!

Finally, I'll wrap this post up with these two parting shots, one of the front of the building and another of the (undamaged) sign face proudly bearing the McDonald's Express logo. I hope you all enjoyed this post, both the Lost History component shining some light on this forgotten McDonald's concept and also the pictorial component exploring the still-operating Memphis location that was born from the idea. If you have any memories of your own concerning McDonald's Express or any of the restaurant chain's other experiments in the 1990s, please share them with me in the comments! Until next time, then... thanks for reading, and as always, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are :)

Retail Retell

UPDATE, April 2021: As suspected, McDonald's has indeed purchased the former Rite Aid building across the street from the Quince Road McDonald's Express, and has constructed a brand-new full-size location that will replace the existing restaurant once it opens. See the photo below for a look at the new building. You can also see more details on the site plan and architecture in this PDF.

New McDonald's, as viewed from the existing McDonald's Express lot, 4-13-21. Courtesy Google Maps

Rite Aid Closing, Germantown, TN

Today's post highlights Shelby County, TN, retail.

Last month on the Mid-South Retail Blog was, arguably, our most productive month yet - and I'm happy to have shared four posts with you in that period. Now that we're in August and the blog is returning to a more regular, spaced-out schedule, I fear that I won't be able to match that amount of posts in one month ever again. (As you know, the usual standard I try to hold myself to is simply one post per month, and sometimes I don't even meet that goal!) But I still have plenty of great content up my sleeves, so I hope you'll stick around regardless.

One such content area is, of course, the saga that is Fred's. Of last month's four posts, two were dedicated to that topic. Several more are in the works as well, although as promised I'll be spacing them out a little bit more in the future. Perhaps the best way to cap off my dedication/stubborn persistence (whatever you want to call it :P ) of documenting Fred's freefall was being contacted by journalist Wayne Risher of The Daily Memphian to speak about the company, its new hedge fund management, and its future. I was proud to be able to contribute to Mr. Risher's profile on Fred's, which was published this past Monday, August 12, 2019. If you've discovered the blog through that, welcome, and thanks for stopping by! If you haven't read the article, I strongly encourage you to do so, as it's a very well-written and comprehensive piece. It can be accessed here: The rise and fall of Coldwater's pride, Fred's Inc.

This month, the blog returns not to Fred's but instead to our other ongoing liquidation series, focusing on Rite Aid's exit from the Mid-South. Of course, by now this news is just about a year old, but we've still got several stores to tour. You'll recall that, of the ten Memphis-area locations, I visited five. (You can keep track of, and revisit, my previous posts at this page, which is also accessible from the blog's sidebar.) After today's post, we'll have only one more of those five left to feature, and it can probably be considered the highest-profile Rite Aid in the metro area. It was certainly the freshest, and it also closed last among the bunch. We'll head to that store (and reveal its location, if you haven't already guessed it) in December, but today, we're going to tour the Germantown, TN, Rite Aid.

I visited the Germantown Rite Aid on July 20, 2018, fairly close to the store's final day I believe (although unfortunately I don't have an exact date for that). I actually had not been intending to visit this store at all; rather, this was simply a spur-of-the-moment deal, taking place after I toured that other, fancier Rite Aid I just mentioned, the one we'll be seeing in December. Intentional or not, however, I wound up very happy that I visited this location. Among the Mid-South stores, this one was definitely a contender for most unique in several respects.

Located at 7570 W Farmington Blvd, this Rite Aid occupied a prime anchor spot in the small Saddle Creek North shopping center, which - as its name suggests - is located north of (across the street from) Germantown's popular Shops at Saddle Creek. I don't have a build date for this location, but given its store number - 7205 - it likely opened sometime in the late 1990s, given that stores 7202 and 7203, both located in Memphis, opened in 1998. (Of the sixteen store numbers between 7191 and 7206, seven were located in the Memphis metro. Clearly, the company was bent on infiltrating the market in that time period!)

I'm not certain if this shopping strip was built by the same developers as Saddle Creek proper, but it's obvious that the architecture was designed to be upscale so as to match the upscale tenants taking residence across the street. As a result, instead of the traditional 90s Rite Aid exterior design that we're used to seeing, with the dual blue awnings and the signature diamond windows, this store is much more elegant, with brick columns, stucco arches, and a stately façade. Even the lamppost in the above image is fancy-looking!

Even though this store, unlike most Rite Aid locations, was not built at an intersection, it is still laid out in a street-corner-oriented fashion, with the entryway on a diagonal. Here we're looking at said entryway, where we see the automatic doors were plastered with the same red "store liquidation sale" signs we've seen so far at Cordova, Horn Lake, and Southaven.

Heading inside the doors, we're immediately greeted by this standee, which once held store circulars but now was being used to advertise the discount percentage. And judging by the handwritten update, I'd assume the sale was getting closer to its final days by the time I stopped in.

These next two shots focus on the interior view of the store's entryway. As you can see, even with the absence of the usual diamond windows, the windows that are still present here at the entrance to the store do let in a good amount of natural light. Above the doors, we find a "Thank you for shopping at RITE AID" sign - which, by the way, is actually double-sided at this location (see the exterior photo of the entryway, two paragraphs above).

The cosmetics department, signed as "Beauty Shop" in this décor package, is the first department one encounters upon entering. It's located along the left-side wall. Beyond it in the background, we can catch a glimpse of this store's pharmacy counter, whose signage was rather poorly covered over. The pharmacy had already closed for good by the time of my visit.

Already it should likely be clear that this store's interior layout is nothing like your usual 90s Rite Aid. Where typically you'd see aisles splayed out in diagonals, with a curving actionway leading toward a pharmacy located off on one side of the building, here the aisles are instead placed into neat rows, and we've got a clear view straight toward the pharmacy in the back of the store. With this in mind, it's possible that this store may actually have opened as something else, but I have no way of knowing whether or not that's the case. If any of you may know, please drop a line in the comments!

Stepping over into the first aisle, so that we are standing parallel to the left-side perimeter wall. This view is simply taking another look at the "thank you" sign hanging above the exit. Before the gondola shelving begins here in the cosmetics department, there are a couple of smaller fixtures used to hold merchandise, such as the one shown in this image. I like the custom wavy pattern in the glass. This can also be seen in better detail two photos back.

As we move closer to the pharmacy counter at the rear of the store, here are a few scenes taken from in and around the center cut-through actionway. Yes, that's right - this Rite Aid had a center cut-through actionway! The symmetric, simple layout of the aisles in this location was a nice change of pace from the oftentimes-confusing normal 90s Rite Aid setup.

A look down the left-side perimeter wall from our new, further-back vantage point reveals that this aisle had actually been closed off to the public; see the small barricade at the edge of the aisle. Still, if I remember correctly this was the only such aisle blocked off, so I felt comfortable exploring back here anyway. In any case, this seems more like a way of informing customers no more stock was located back here than it does a way of trying to keep them out.

You'll also notice that the aisle marker here reads Aisle 13. The back halves of each aisle are numbered separately from the front halves, which increased this store's total aisle count to 23.

Just another close-up of Rite Aid's oh-so-90s endcap toppers. I must have gotten a shot of this at every Rite Aid I visited!

  

Finally, we arrive at the pharmacy counter, and get to see the view from its vantage point down across the rest of the back actionway. As you'd expect, it's entirely devoid of merchandise. It's always a little strange to see a store in this state. Bittersweet.

You may not recognize it, but the blue stripe on the upper wall is actually a normal element from this décor package. In the diamond window stores, it's simply broken up by, well, the diamond windows: see here for an example.

Elsewhere at the pharmacy counter, we find a Walgreens logo or two, indicating that this pharmacy had switched ownership briefly before the store shut down and transferred its prescriptions to the nearest Walgreens. There's also an "in loving memory" dedication - which I fear wasn't moved to said Walgreens once this location closed its doors - and a store map, where you can better visualize what I was telling you earlier about how this store is laid out compared to other 90s Rite Aids. For an example of the latter, see here and compare.

As usual, the in-store GNC department was located near the pharmacy, and in the above four photos you can see it remained somewhat stocked. Most of the merchandise had been consolidated further into the salesfloor, though, so that's probably not too accurate of a representation.

It's my understanding that these GNC departments were actually run as store-within-a-store models, meaning GNC included their Rite Aid business in their total store counts. As a result, then, GNC's store counts have fallen quite a bit, what with all the Rite Aid closures in recent years resulting from Walgreens's acquisition of half of the chain. The GNC departments, to my knowledge, are not being replaced with standalone stores in the same communities (similar to, say, Lands' End departments located in Sears stores that close down), and in fact GNC seems to have been accelerating closures of its other, non-Rite Aid locations as well.

Another trio of center actionway shots now, looking toward the front, left-, and right-side walls of the store, respectively. The four major department signs in this store were for the Pharmacy, Beauty Shop, FoodMart, and 1 Hour Photo counter. We've already seen the first two departments, and we'll explore the latter two in closer detail as the post continues.

I'm not quite sure why I took a shot of this endcap. I guess it must have simply grabbed my attention. The "Notes & Stationery" header is likely original, but then again, so is much of the stuff in this place. Come to think of it, it's probably that "As Seen on TV" 50% off sign that actually made me take notice. All of the other little red signs read "Entire Store" instead.

Heading down the greeting card aisle so that we can take some closer looks at the 1 Hour Photo department, located just past the registers along the front wall. I've shown you this film strip-like signage before, but this was my first time seeing the accompanying, separate "1 Hour Photo" sign. I like it! This also explains why none of the other Rite Aids I visited had marked photo counter signage; those signs were evidently separate in this décor (unlike the rest of the departments, which did have their names printed onto the background patterns). The question now becomes, did those other stores ditch their original "1 Hour Photo" signs because they got rid of the department, or for some other unknown reason? Or perhaps it was supposed to be removed at all stores, and the Germantown location simply disobeyed orders? Who knows...

Glancing across a handful of aisles as viewed from the front actionway, before settling on taking a stroll down Aisle 8. A mostly barren Aisle 8, I should add. Only some cough drops, dental hygiene materials, and wrist braces remain - none of which, I believe, were originally stocked in this aisle.

I can't remember which aisle I walked down for this photo, but I do know it was the aisle housing the store's home movie selection. You can see some DVDs in the bottom left of the above image, but I use the more generic term "home movie" for reasons you'll see in the next image! In this pic, though, my focus was not on that but rather on the flooring that could be found in this store. If I'm not mistaken, this is terrazzo flooring - a rather fancy material, and one that certainly isn't found in other Rite Aid stores from this era. Whether this indicates the store originally opened with a different occupant, or this was just another way to make the place seem more upscale so that it fit in with the Saddle Creek atmosphere, I have no clue.

Here's why I avoided calling this area the DVD department: because it had a whole ton of VHS tapes still for sale, in addition to the DVDs! Seriously - I only have a couple pictured here (because other people were browsing the same area and I didn't want to be super obvious taking this photo), but there were multiple shelves' worth of VHS tapes for sale. And what amazes me more is not that Rite Aid was still selling movies on VHS in 2018, but rather, that they simply never lowered the price on these things. I mean, asking $6.99 for a 1993 film, on an outdated mode of viewing that most people aren't likely to have the appropriate equipment to watch with, that's available to stream online for $3.99?! That's asinine! And that's supposedly just their "sale price"!! If they really wanted them out the door, they could have at least lowered the price to 99 cents or something; I've even seen cheaper at Goodwill. But no - Rite Aid is apparently too stubborn to use common sense here. Given the amount of similarly aged merchandise I've seen at other Rite Aid stores (including notebooks that had been on the shelf so long their pages had yellowed), I'd hazard a guess that an unwillingness to lower ridiculously high prices is a common theme with the (understandably) beleaguered chain.

...my rant aside, here's another shot of the terrazzo flooring, this time also including one of those red 70% off signs as well as a little bit of 1990s Rite Aid shelf décor.

 

Stepping into Aisle 9 now, where we get a handful of views looking in various directions across the salesfloor. In each, multiple aisle signs can be seen, all precisely arranged in nice and neat lines, but sadly overlooking empty aisles, despite whatever the placards on the markers read. In the middle shot, the FoodMart department sign can also be seen, placed above some coolers along the store's right-side wall: we'll head over that way next...

...and on our way, first take a quick stop for this photo, showcasing a "Red Hot Specials" sign placed on an endcap in the center actionway that I found unique. (It's certainly been "red hot" outside this week, haha!) More of the FoodMart sign can be seen here, too. It's worth noting that this FoodMart sign was slightly different from the others I've witnessed, in that it actually listed food categories in those diamonds, such as "candy" and "milk" in this particular image. Was that common at other Rite Aids? Does it help anyone pinpoint this store's age?

Moving down to the FoodMart department, here are a couple of shots of the aforementioned cooler units lining the wall. They are generic in design, and unsurprisingly empty, but at least the blue, rounded mesh light bars above the cases give us some clues as to what they used to stock (see the pink category names printed on them).

From the front of the FoodMart department - located in the front right corner of the salesfloor - here's a view along the right-side wall, as well as an angled view above the gondola shelving across the rest of the salesfloor (clear back to the GNC and pharmacy departments in the rear). I'm not sure what that ladder is doing down at the center actionway, nor what happened with the shelving that should have been straight in front of me, forming the right side of Aisle 11 and left side of Aisle 12. I'm not convinced that this would always have been a double-wide aisle as shown, though I could be wrong.

What little (and I do mean little!) food remained was placed along the front wall of the store, here in the front right corner. As you can see, it's not much, but it's not bad, either, in that it is at least name brand stuff remaining. We actually stocked up on some green beans and Chef Boyardee ourselves. Of course, at their marked prices they were considerably pricier than Walmart, but with the discount they wound up being a good deal.

These two views are more or less the same, looking down the front actionway over towards the exit doors; I simply decided to be somewhat "artsy" with the first shot, and hold my phone camera down near the floor to see how that view would turn out. As it happens, not very different from my normal camera level, lol!

The front of the 1 Hour Photo counter was lined with this small section of shelving housing various electronics products, which understandably I was rather wary of (I'm somewhat wary of drugstore electronics purchases in any situation, and this store's huge selection of VHS tapes didn't help assuage that feeling at all!). Still, though, we did take a risk and wind up buying a handful of items... and sure enough, I feared that our purchase was a dud, as a charging cable we bought turned out not to fit properly into our phones. As it turns out, though, now that we've switched carriers and gotten new phones, this cable works properly! (As you smarter folks may be able to guess, our old phones took Micro-USB cables, whereas our new devices require USB Type C.) We'd tossed the thing into our Goodwill donation pile once we discovered it didn't work right - thank goodness we'd been lazy in actually getting our donations to the store XD

Just like the overhead "1 Hour Photo" sign, the gold mesh light bars shown in this image were a new sight for me, too. Up until this point I had only seen the blue variety, which can also be seen in the above pic right beside the gold.

Here's one more view across the front end toward the exit doors and that "thank you" sign, as well as a brief glimpse behind the 1 Hour Photo counter. A manager's office is located just out of view to my left from this vantage point, and I seem to vaguely remember some police officers entering the store and heading over to said office while I was here. But this visit took place more than a year ago, so I'm having trouble remembering exactly what happened. If my memory is actually real (!), then I wonder what was going on.

For our final interior shots, here's one more view of the 1 Hour Photo signage, followed by a peek at the signature pink-and-blue checkout counters at this Rite Aid. Even though the rest of the aisles were all straightened out here in Germantown, the checkouts retained their normal staggered setup :P  Shown alongside the checkout is a notice alerting customers to the location of their new pharmacy, aka the Walgreens in the next shopping center over.

Heading back outside, we find a sandwich board sign sitting on the sidewalk, in the little alcove created beneath the arches out in front of the entryway, advertising the ongoing liquidation sale. And after that, back out in the parking lot, two more parting pics of the building before we say goodbye to yet another now-shuttered Rite Aid. I certainly could have been happier with additional exterior pics, but there were several people outside each time (oh - including some cops, when I first got there! Perhaps that's why I have that other memory...), so I didn't feel comfortable walking around too much more. Besides, I don't believe there was much else to see, aside from perhaps some different angles on the same shots I already took - it seems like this location actually didn't have a pharmacy drive-thru, believe it or not.

Transitioning now into our usual post-tour random images, up first here is a quick drive-by shot of the place this Rite Aid's prescription files were transferred to, the Walgreens right up the road. Unfortunately my photo here makes this store look even more abandoned than the Rite Aid (!), but that's simply due to the trees blocking the Walgreens logo on the façade :P  Unlike the Rite Aid, this Walgreens is located at an intersection, and does have a pharmacy drive-thru.

Speaking of Walgreens, here are some scans of one of the info pamphlets available for curious customers at the front of the store, followed below by some additional such material, including a homemade liquidation handout and a more official pharmacy closure/relocation notice. Just for the heck of it... and also because the above pamphlet is, for whatever reason, slightly different in style to the one we saw only a few months earlier at the Cordova location.

This flyer confirms for us that the Germantown Rite Aid pharmacy closed on July 12, 2018, eight days before my visit. It also shows how to get to the Walgreens that was to serve as this store's de facto replacement. Look closely, though: that's obviously not the best route, haha! I have absolutely zero clue why or how this happened, but this flyer is suggesting that customers literally make a big circle and put themselves through three intersections' worth of traffic when they can easily avoid that altogether by simply making a left out of the Rite Aid lot instead of the right turn that the flyer proposes. Really strange, but also rather hilarious :P

One of my purchases here was a CD player - actually a super-last-minute purchase, as in we were just about to pay for our transaction when I noticed it sitting on a shelf behind the register and asked if it was for sale. CD players aren't that common of a find anymore (Rite Aid's outdatedness actually came in handy in this scenario, haha!), this was from a name-brand manufacturer, and the discount really helped lower the price to where it was a great deal, so I was sold. My picture above shows the cool Rite Aid logo electronic protection seal affixed to the packaging. I also photographed both this new CD player and my old one that I replaced, but decided y'all probably don't care to see them XD  Anyway, I'll still share this tidbit about the two: my old one, which I'd had for as long as I can remember, has a manufacturing date of May 2003, while this new one was made in November 2015. So it was still already a few years old even when I bought the thing, but it's undeniably newer than the one I had. I wasn't necessarily ready to replace my old one (as I really seem to live by the "if it ain't broke..." motto in many respects), but I've been happy with the new one. And the old one is still sitting in my closet, just because XD

Last but not least, as is tradition with these posts, here's a scan of our receipt. See if you can spot how much I saved on that CD player!! (It would also appear that the green beans I mentioned must actually have been purchased at another Rite Aid, but the Chef Boyardee is on here as promised :P )

For being an unplanned visit, I was very happy with my trip to the Germantown Rite Aid. I got to see a store with an unusual interior layout and classy exterior design, and scored a nice-quality CD boombox for a steal! Hopefully you all enjoyed this stour as well. As I mentioned at the top of this post, we've got one more Memphis-area Rite Aid post coming up this December... but our Rite Aid series doesn't stop there. As always, stay tuned for more! ;)

Thanks for reading, and as always, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!

Retail Retell