Last week I headed into my local McDonald's to get a Big Mac, which I hate to admit falls into my top 10 favorite foods.  This particular McDonald's, which is the one closet to NC State University was torn down a couple months ago and rebuild to become a (drum roll please)...McCafe.  My experiences with McCafes are that the differences between them and their "not as chic" siblings can be basically summed up by the following: More coffee options, there are smoothies, some have lattes that you can tell came from a McDonald's, and sometimes there's a flat screen TV. According to the radio ads the idea is that the average person who likes coffee feels out of place with the coffee elitists at Starbucks and should start hanging out at McDonald's with the other average Joes instead. However the hard plastic seats, red and orange decor, and screaming children in the now indoor ball pen don't exactly say "I want to spend a lot of time here."

So I walked into the McDonald's and I had to do a double take (I must have looked like the guy in the Saturn commericals who asks "Are these all Saturns?") because I wasn't sure I was in a McDonald's.

Once I got over my shock of the decor and had ordered my Big Mac, I sat down on my green and brown padded seat and looked around at the groups of patrons. There was:

• An upper middle class looking family of 4 made up of a college student, his parents, and his much younger kids meal eating sister, all wearing NC State shirts, watching the end of the UNC basketball game and discussing the performance of the NC State team they had just watched at the RBC Center from their bottom level seats.
• A group of 8 teenage boys who sat and watched the game for 20 minutes after they had eaten, before deciding to brave the rain and ride their bikes home.
• Two students using the Wi-Fi with laptops who were feverishly working on some type of chemistry homework, glancing up at the TV to see the replays, and who thanks to the 6 trays that had collected on one side of their table had appeared to have ordered 3 rounds of food in the time they had been there.

Comfortable atmosphere + entertainment + cheap food + Wi-Fi + a friendly staff = a destination fast food resturant that gives an alternative to some of the sports bars, libraries, and apartments around campus.

Now this is McCafe people will hang out at / actively seek out and the patrons that were in there proved it.  Give them what they want and they will come.