Chris McDonald

McDonald now brings this excitement to 35-unit, Arden Hills, Minn.-based casual-dining chain Green Mill Restaurants Inc., where he has held the position of director of information technology, or IT, for five years.

Green Mill's corporate IT department comprises McDonald and one staff member. "The general rule is, if it has a wire, I am probably responsible for it," the executive noted. The department provides IT support to all 35 Green Mill franchisees, including assistance with the Digital Dining by MenusoftPOS system, and, if additional support is needed, acts as a liaison between these stores and technology vendor Integrated Restaurant Systems.

McDonald and his colleague also are charged with maintaining the company's corporate intranet, wide-area network, online file transfer protocol, or FTP, site, and website, as well as with supporting hourly sales polling to Green Mill's SQL server. What's more, the duo executes technology training of hourly staff and management through hands-on sessions and/or classes and manages the wireless Internet service afforded to guests at all locations through an agreement with DragnFly Wireless.

The technologies and duties that McDonald has at Green Mill today are a far cry from some of those he found when he signed on.

"When I started with Green Mill five years ago, our office network consisted of a few workstations," he recalled. "I had the ability to remotely tap into one store via a dial-up modem, and that was it."

Prior to signing on at Green Mill, McDonald served for four years as the IT manager of the now-defunct 10-unit Sidney's Restaurants. Before that, he worked his way up through the ranks at Parasole Restaurant Holdings in Minneapolis, parent company of Manny's Steakhouse and Chino Latino, among other concepts, and originator of the now publicly traded Buca di Beppo dinnerhouse chain, which was spun off in 1999. The original Buca di Beppo in Minneapolis was one of three Parasole operations where McDonald held the post of dining room manager, and it was during this tenure that he became interested in restaurant-related IT issues, ultimately leaving the chain to move in that direction.

McDonald said he believes the greatest value of technology to restaurants is its ability to enhance the guest experience. Along those lines, an application involving the use of Symbol Technologies hand-held terminals to take orders at tables and transmit them to the kitchen has been introduced at some stores and is being taken chainwide, he indicated. Also being rolled out are Epson wireless printers, allowing credit card transactions to be handled tableside.

The intranet overseen by McDonald's department is used for sharing recipes, communication and corporate forms with franchisees.

For training and administrative purposes, Green Mill uses in meetings an interactive white board from Smart Technologies that records into computer file form the notes and illustrations drawn on it. The franchisor also produces its own training videos, which are available via the intranet, according to McDonald.

Plans have been made for implementing online ordering, he said, and consideration is being given to the development of a centralized call center for takeout and delivery orders.

McDonald's reports about the IT progress made at Green Mill in recent years should not suggest that he has not had to face his share of technology project hurdles. He said cost constraints are his greatest challenge. Because Green Mill is a franchised-based system, "I am not just dealing with our corporate checkbook, but with 35 checkbooks," he noted, "And finding solutions that benefit and are affordable for each location can be tough."

Green Mill currently is considering a cutting-edge remedy for the problem in the form of a centralized technology fund to which franchisees would contribute a small percentage of sales.

"The fund would replace the annual support contracts we have now and allow us to make quicker systemwide decisions centrally to benefit our franchisees; costs would be paid out of the central fund and [would] not affect monthly store budgets," McDonald explained. His company uses a similar strategy for pooling marketing dollars — an arrangement that has resulted in a greater marketing impact chainwide, according to Green Mill sources.

At times, McDonald acknowledged, selling franchisees on the idea of making systemwide infrastructure changes proves challenging. "Not every franchisee welcomes change, especially technological change," he said. "They may be fearful of it, not understand the whys or are simply not interested."

Yet another hurdle is geography. Many Green Mill stores are located in large cities, but others are situated in smaller communities, rendering it more difficult to deploy applications in a consistent manner. For example, McDonald had no choice but to implement high-speed Internet access to all stores in multiple phases.

"First we installed whatever was available," he explained of the connectivity effort. "For some it was DSL, for some it was an integrated T1 line, for some it was cable, and for a couple it was wireless. The next phase of the project is unifying the connectivity to the same platform."

McDonald doesn't dwell on negatives; rather, he continues to enthusiastically await the next technology development. "What grabs me about technology is that it is always changing — and what will be happening next," he stated.

The IT specialist said he would love to see vendors develop more systems that build customer loyalty through recognition. "We have frequent diner programs in place, but it is up to the customer to let us know they have a card or are a member," he observed. "What I would like to see would be some sort of radio frequency identification [RFID] chip that would let everyone know we have a regular customer. Perhaps the chip is embedded in a frequent diner card, and when customers enter the building, we would know who they are, what they like, what they buy — anything to make their experience better."

McDonald lives on a small "hobby farm" in central Minnesota with his wife, Kelli, daughter, Elena, 7, and son James, 3. Even away from work he maintains an IT connection, serving as the resident "tech guy" at First Baptist Church in Cambridge, Minn., in which he and his family are active. The McDonalds' biggest hobby involves their seven show dogs.

A native of Edina, Minn. McDonald left high school after his sophomore year to study political science and foreign languages at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., and, subsequently, the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minn. He said he expects to receive a bachelor of arts degree in business management from Northwestern College in Roseville, Minn., later this year and begin the master of business administration program at Bethel University, also in Roseville, in January 2007.