Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994                   TAG: 9401180075
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

MCDONALD'S FUTURE TAPS AN OLD IDEA: FACE-TO-FACE ORDERING

The multibillion-dollar fast-food corporation is replacing some of its drive-through intercoms - the ones that go snap, crackle and pop - with face-to-face food ordering.

It's fast-food redux - a return to the early drive-through days when cars cruised up to a burger joint window to place orders in person. That system was streamlined with the introduction of intercom systems. Now, billions of burgers later, McDonald's is experimenting with losing the intercoms.

Call it a move from low technology to no technology.

"There's a human there taking the order," said Sam Cimino, owner of a McDonald's in Hollywood that's a test site for McDonald's to determine whether to replace microphones with real people.

A few hundred other sites across the country are testing the new "Face to Face" ordering system, McDonald's spokesperson Malesia Webb-Dunn said.

The new setup, "sort of shocks people," said Willie Spann, the Hollywood unit manager. "But a lot of them love it, that real-home feeling. A lot of them don't like talking through the machine."

Added Frances Matthews, who works the order-taker booth: "It's faster, a lot better. Plus you get a lot of smiles."

Burger King last year launched an interactive audio-video ordering program, tested at a couple of its Miami restaurants. "We . . . have the patent on it, but it's on hold for now," said spokesman Michael Evans.