Carhops Are Getting Good Feedback at McDonald’s

McTired? McHarried? McRushed?

The folks who gave the world Shamrock Shakes and Big Macs think that they have the answer: McCurb.

At a McDonald’s restaurant in Studio City, waiters and waitresses hustle out to parked cars to jot down orders and deliver Big Macs. “It reminds people of years ago when they had carhops,” store manager Miazel Harris said. “The only thing we’re missing are the skates.”

The restaurant would like a conventional drive-through window, but nearby residents complain that that would produce what some have dubbed a McProblem. The site’s layout is not conducive to a drive-through, the residents say, and they and a city councilman oppose the restaurant’s request for one.

In short, they maintain, McDonald’s does not deserve a break today.

So for now, the Ventura Boulevard restaurant continues McCurb Service, which it started six months ago, copying a McDonald’s in Santa Barbara. McDonald’s says the new service has produced many happy meals, even for those not quite old enough to clearly remember fuzzy dice and poodle skirts.

“I think it’s bitchin’,” said Adrian Rozuk, a 38-year-old contractor idling the engine of his neon-orange pickup as he waited for cheeseburgers and fries.

McCurb Service is offered to customers who park in four designated parking spaces at the back of the restaurant Monday through Friday from noon until 2 p.m.

Two employees stand poised in the lot, taking turns running up to car windows and scribbling down orders. They sprint back into the restaurant to grab bags of food and ring up the purchases before huffing back to present the meals. The average transaction takes two minutes.

“It’s almost like a drive-through,” said Janet Koehler of North Hollywood. “It’s better in some ways because it’s faster.”

Not that McDonald’s has given up the idea of a drive-through. In September, the restaurant applied to Los Angeles for a conditional use permit and a zone change.

But neighboring merchants and residents had a beef with the restaurant’s request. They said the drive-through would exacerbate problems with parking at the shopping center and with traffic on Ventura Boulevard. The residents also worried that the drive-through would be dangerous because of poor visibility, said Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn.

All in all, it was “a big McProblem,” Lucente said.

A zoning administrator agreed and denied the restaurant’s request in December. McDonald’s countered that a drive-through lane will not cause traffic or parking problems and took its case to the Board of Zoning Appeals, which will consider the issue next month.

Residents, merchants and City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area, say they are still opposed to the drive-through, although they have no immediate plans to curb McCurb.

The restaurant has not decided whether McCurb Service will continue if a drive-through is approved. For now, though, the restaurant is pleased with it.

“We were losing people who simply didn’t want to get out of their cars,” Harris said. “Fortunately, we’ve got some of them back.”

The customers range from parents traveling with children to the movers and shakers too busy to stop wheeling and dealing.

“One customer came in and was on the car phone and he never got off the phone even while he was ordering,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of that if they’re taking care of business.”

The service is so flexible that sometimes customers don’t even need a car to qualify for McCurb.

During a recent lunch hour, Jo Farkas, 65, of Studio City walked to the back of the restaurant, gave her order to a McCurb clerk and waited at an outdoor table until her $2.97 meal was delivered to her.

Jeff Foxworthy, 34, of Beverly Hills said that when he saw the McCurb sign, it brought back memories of an Atlanta drive-in where he used to order hot dogs and onion rings in college.

“It was nostalgia,” he said as he waited in his Mazda RX7. “It whipped my car into this parking lot.”

Then he paused as he thought about such service at McDonald’s.

“But only in California,” he said, “would you have McCurb.”