Chicago : McDonald's at the company's new HQ

McDonald's is about to move into its new global headquarters and, as a first step, the burger giant tomorrow will open a sleek, next-generation restaurant on the West Loop building's ground floor. 

• This Fulton Market District McDonald's is open to the public.
• The new nine-story building will house the company's global corporate and U.S. headquarters, along with its Hamburger University training center.
• McDonald's signed a lease in June 2016 to move its headquarters to the former Harpo Studios site in the city's Fulton Market District from its longtime suburban perch in Oak Brook. The building was built by Sterling Bay, which bought Oprah Winfrey's former broadcast and production campus for $30.5 million in 2014. 

In addition to the modern design and technology upgrades that have trickled in to franchises over the past 18 months, this restaurant will have something else: international menu offerings not available anywhere else in the U.S.

Inside McDonald's new Fulton Market headquarters.

The menu, which will rotate every few months, will start off with loaded cheese and bacon fries from Australia, an Angus burger from Canada and a spicy chicken sandwich from Hong Kong, two salads from France and a "Prestigio McFlurry" from Brazil with strawberry sauce and chocolate-covered coconut bits. The entire McCafe coffee selection will come from Australia and be served by specially trained, full-time baristas.

A map of the world serves to remind customers that this McDonald's has international menu items. The menu will change every few months.

"We're weeks away from making this location the global headquarters for McDonald's, so it became clear we needed a unique, one-of-a-kind experience," said Robert Gibbs, the company's chief communications officer, at a press preview this morning. "Everything we've done to modernize the brand over the past several years is represented in the restaurant."

The approximately 6,000-square-foot restaurant features oak laminate-clad walls and small tables, plus longer communal steel tables with built-in laptop charging pads. The seating is a combination of leather and a proprietary leather-like material that McDonald's created for its modern stores. The building's original concrete pillars remain, and red-tinted glass at the entrance adds a pop of color to the mostly neutral space. One wall, etched with a map of the world, features small Golden Arches signs that move and illuminate when a country's menu item is available.

The company intends the location to serve as a showcase that other franchise owners from around the world can visit for inspiration as they begin the process of updating their own stores.

"It was really important to us to be aspirational yet attainable," said Juliana Strieff, the company's global creative design manager. The industrial-chic location, designed by Landini Associates in Sydney, is an example of one of 12 design prototypes that all U.S. restaurants will adopt by 2020. Previously, McDonald's franchisees used between 100 and 150 designers around the world, which made it tough to keep everything "on-brand."

Like other recently unveiled McDonald's, the restaurant on West Randolph Street will offer table service, self-service kiosks and mobile ordering. It doesn't have a drive-thru, but it does have two designated parking spots up at the front of the building on Randolph that will be dedicated to curbside pickup for mobile orders, and two others for Uber Eats drivers grabbing delivery orders.

The restaurant also includes an area with a long table and sliding glass doors that can be left open as regular seating or closed when reserved for private meetings. The space will be available free of charge to people in the community who want to hold meetings or brainstorming sessions.

McDonald's signed a lease in June 2016 to move its headquarters to the former Harpo Studios site in the city's Fulton Market District from its longtime suburban perch in Oak Brook. The new nine-story building will house the company's global corporate and U.S. headquarters, along with its Hamburger University training center.

The building was built by Sterling Bay, which bought Oprah Winfrey's former broadcast and production campus for $30.5 million in 2014. Sources say the company will start to take occupancy of the building at the end of this week. Gibbs, McDonald's communications chief, said the company will "move down in waves over the next few weeks."