Design: The Death of a Place to Sit..

What we lose when fast-food joints eliminate seating

- MARK WILSON

GO TO JUST ABOUT ANY fast-food restaurant in the late morning, and you'll see older adults enjoying a cup of coffee with friends. Head there in the late afternoon, and you'll encounter teens getting into (just a little) mischief after school. These scenes exist because our fast-food restaurants are more than a place to grab an inexpensive bite. They're social necessities.

But that's not the case in Fort Worth, Texas, where a high-tech new McDonald's will take your order via an app and deliver your fries via a conveyor belt. What it won't do? Provide you with a chair, a table, or even access to a bathroom. The café includes only a kitchen, a counter and kiosks for ordering, and two drive-through lanes. The McDonald's store is a prototype of what may be a future format for the company.

The "Golden Arches" is hardly the only restaurant chain that has been investing in smaller, dining-roomless outposts. Companies ranging from Sweetgreen to Taco Bell are trying similar tactics in an effort to add new stores and get closer to diners without having to invest in expensive square footage and labor.

The very definition of "restaurant" is now in flux. During the pandemic, nearly 80,000 of them shuttered-but fast-food joints thrived, with customers opting for takeout and delivery. Ghost kitchens also proliferated, eroding the idea that a restaurant must have tables: As MrBeast and others have shown, hospitality can be as anemic as a website with overeager branding, so long as there's a deep fryer somewhere. For fast-food restaurants focused on expansion, a new café might be little more than a mechanism that allows them to process more orders as they grow their digital storefront.