The grills McDonalds uses are made by wellbilt and they are called “platen†grills. They are adjustable to accommodate the different thickness of the burgers boy a computer. They also use a orange ish color non stick sheet on the top platen. At least they used to anyway. I never worked at a McDonalds however I did work on many of them when I was a mechanical contractor. A whole lot better than working on the fryers......yuck! They simply select the burger, punch it into the touchscreen, load the burgers and press start, down goes the top platen for 20 seconds, 30 seconds etc. When the control Times out, up goes the platen and into the tray for heated storage. The storage trays are also totally computerized, enter the food to store and wa-la when they have reached the maximum storage time, based on which food item, buzzer goes off and they are then SUPPOSED to throw them away. The onions come in a bag and every morning they empty them into a stainless container and add water. Before the are rehydrated they look have the consistency of Lipton dry onion soup mix. Oh, last thing, the franchise owner that was my customer gave me whenever I asked him the 1/4 lb patties and I would grill them, boy howdy they were the best, no kidding either. He used to do it all the time and suggested it to me. He owned 11 of them. 1 in Abilene, 2 in Junction City, 2 in Manhattan and 6 in Topeka. His house, his twin engine plane, his horses, his big game trophies etc. proved to me that even the “dollar menu†must be profitable. We became quite good friends. Unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer 6 years ago. In a bit of irony my father also died of pancreatic cancer 5 years prior to Clark’s death. When my dad had but a few days Clark flew myself, my wife and our 2 kids to Oregon to be with him. Sorry for the diatribe.
