Acting junior Roman Losa waited 42 minutes for his food at the new McDonald\u2019s location on Guadalupe Street during its soft opening on Monday. He said the wait did not bother him because he was excited to be there on its first day, even if it could have meant waiting hours in line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been keeping track of the construction,\u201d Losa said. \u201cAs soon as I saw them put the metal panels on the side, I just fell to my knees, and I\u2019ve been excited since that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long lines of students formed outside of the new location into the early hours of the morning. Losa said he learned about the opening date a few days earlier and was excited to visit the new location of the popular franchise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s purposefully targeting the college demographic, and I\u2019m falling victim to that, so I do think it will be very busy,\u201d Losa said while waiting in line.<\/p>\n
Kenway Brown, a crew member and cashier, attributed the long lines to employees adjusting to the restaurant\u2019s layout on its first day. Brown had trained and worked at another McDonald\u2019s location for a month before the opening and said employees were not accustomed to the new equipment, citing differences between the two stores\u2019 drink machines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were busy all day,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe had people lined up to the back at 3 a.m. We didn\u2019t have a pause until 3 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the long lines, Brown said he enjoyed how busy the restaurant was during its first day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never experienced opening a new store,\u201d Brown said. \u201cBut I would definitely do it all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Brown embraced the opening-day rush, Gihanna Burrowes, a health and society junior, said she was concerned about crowding inside the new store.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really packed,\u201d Burrowes said. \u201cI think they\u2019re really understaffed, and I understand, but I think that McDonald\u2019s should have hired more people or had more people transfer in to work at this location, considering it\u2019s right off of a college campus, and it\u2019s the only one that\u2019s (within) walking distance from campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burrowes said she expects the lines to die down once the restaurant settles into regular operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it was just this bad because it was the first day,\u201d Burrowes said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019ll be this bad on the regular.\u201d<\/p>\n
April Guillen, a health and society junior, said it was cool to see students excited for something new near campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always wanting a McDonald\u2019s on campus,\u201d Guillen said. \u201c(It\u2019s) something convenient or cheap for students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acting junior Roman Losa waited 42 minutes for his food at the new McDonald\u2019s location on Guadalupe Street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-447130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}