Why Franchisees are looking to Duluth

Paul wasn’t new to McDonald’s.

“I’ve got 40 years in the system now,” he says. He started as a crew person in suburban Chicago and worked his way up to vice president of operations, overseeing 21 restaurants in Florida.

When he decided to become a Franchisee, he mapped out where he was willing to go, marking his options in red, yellow, and green.

“I wanted to get back to the Midwest, because my extended family’s still in the Chicagoland area,” he says.

Some options didn’t fit. He turned down a package in the Florida Panhandle, partly, he admits, because of a family rule.

“My wife needs to be near a Target, and that’s an agreed-upon action,” he says.

He passed on Fargo, too.

“I thought Fargo was going to be a little too cold for me,” he says. “But then Duluth came. I came and visited. It’s a beautiful town, beautiful place. It’s got a college.”

The two restaurants needed some TLC. They had long drive-through times and tired landscaping. But Paul saw what they could become.

“You could see the upside,” he says. “And you always ask the other question: where’s the growth?”

What surprised Paul most wasn’t the place. It was the people around him.

Moving is hard, even after 40 years. He started in November, the slowest season, and the unknowns piled up.

“I can run restaurants all day,” he says. “It’s the other side. The ownership side, the insurance side. Everything just keeps coming.”

But he didn’t carry it alone. He had support from the field office, an operations consultant, a business partner, and a clear playbook for every step.

“It was many hands helping,” he says, “which makes light lifting.”

The biggest surprise came from the other Franchisees in the region. He expected to be treated like the new guy. Instead, his phone started ringing.

“Whatever you need, I’ll send over my people,” they told him. “It’s like one big family.”

Paul’s instinct about Duluth’s upside lines up with what the city is planning.

Duluth is in the middle of reshaping its downtown. A study by the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research found that rightsizing the I-35 freeway through downtown could free up land for private investment worth anywhere from roughly $500 million to more than $4.5 billion.

The same research found that 86% of surveyed stakeholders expected private-sector interest in developing that land, with housing, retail, and hospitality among the most likely uses.

For a Franchisee, that points to a city working to bring more people, more foot traffic, and more spending into its core.

For Franchisees weighing a move, the business case is only half the question. The other half is what life looks like once the move is done.

In Duluth, a lot of that life happens outdoors.

The city calls itself an outdoor-adventure capital, and it has spent $36 million on trails and recreation in recent years to cement its claim to that title. There’s an eight-mile Lakewalk along the shore of Lake Superior, more than 200 miles of city trails, and Park Point, the longest freshwater sandbar in the world. In 2014, Outside magazine named Duluth its “Best Town Ever.”

It’s also known as “the air-conditioned city,” cooled in summer by the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the world, a reputation that’s drawn national attention as people look north for somewhere with room to grow.

Paul hasn’t had much time to explore it yet. 

“I go from McDonald’s to home to McDonald’s,” he says. But the parts he has seen, he likes. “People are nice. That’s a wonderful thing. And it’s definitely very pretty.”

The city is working for his family, too. His daughter is studying at the local university while serving as his office manager.

Paul’s advice to anyone considering a similar move comes down to two things: Do the work, and trust the system.

“Listen to all the offers. Do your due diligence. Keep an open mind,” he says.

He knows the hardest part is the leap itself, especially for someone leaving a place like Florida or California, who may not get to stay where they are.

“You’ve got to take risks,” he says. “It’s OK to give it a shot.”

For him, the system made that risk worth taking. He’d looked at other businesses back in Florida but kept coming back to McDonald’s.

“Without the McDonald’s system, I probably would have never done that,” he says. “They give you the tools, the resources. It’s not just talk. They walk the walk, and they’re there for you.”

For McDonald’s Franchisees looking to build something lasting, Duluth offers a place where a trusted system, a growing market, and a genuinely good life come together and where the next move forward is already taking shape.