Same combos, people -- different look

SELMA -- When the McDonald's in this Johnston County town recently closed for an 81-day overhaul, bingo players, couples who had kindled romances in the restaurant and other longtime regulars felt as if they had lost a home.

So when the McDonald's kicked off a grand reopening Tuesday, it was a big celebration. The mayor, other town and county officials, and police officers packed the house. Free massages were on tap, and Ronald McDonald bounced around.

Two weeks of 49-cent cheeseburgers, student fundraisers and visits with the Local Ladies of the Red Hat Society also lie ahead.

In small towns like Selma, which has a population of about 7,000, local customers form special attachments to their fast food joints as places to linger over coffee and catch up on gossip.

It's a clientele that franchise owners don't forget about even as they decide to make over their restaurants with granite countertops, bronze sculptures and flat-panel TVs.

"I just felt strongly our customers deserved one of the best-looking restaurants around," said owner Cheryl Hunter, of the remake of her Selma restaurant, valued about $1.5 million.

The floor plan has changed, but the menu items customer Rebecca Frayre, 40, knows by heart remain the same.

Frayre met the man who would become her husband in the Selma McDonald's about two years ago. For weeks, she had noticed Jaime Frayre, 45, sitting in a booth nearby. One day they began talking and have been together ever since.

"He's a No. 2 person," Rebecca Frayre said, referring to a sausage McMuffin combo that she also usually orders every morning.

W.G. Ricks, 89, said he can't remember people's names too well anymore. But he likes that everyone at the restaurant seems to remember his. His family used to own the land the McDonald's was built on.

Even though the McDonald's added fancier specialty coffees, including cappuccinos and mochas, Ricks still likes going every morning for his regular, senior-discounted 49-cent coffee.

At another McDonald's renovation in West Smithfield, owners Fred and Doris Huebner also paid attention to their regulars. They were so concerned about displacing a group of retirees that has gathered daily at the restaurant since the 1980s, that they kept an on-site mobile home unit stocked with coffee, tables and chairs for the group to meet in during construction.

When the restaurant reopened, the owners dedicated a plaque and a long table at the center of the restaurant to the "Amen Corner" group.

But change is still sometimes hard.

A few customers at the Selma restaurant Tuesday said they missed the red-and-white mansard roof, the former signature of McDonald's restaurants everywhere.

"They need some red up there so it looks like a McDonald's," said bingo regular Linda Poe, 59, of Pine Level.

The more modern design didn't sit well with Bobby Rogers, 59, of Selma at first either.

"But you change," he said. "The more I come, the more I like it."