The building on East D that was once home for McDonald’s is tranforming visually into a Wendy’s restaurant following some exterior renovation last week. Sunset Equities, the McPherson-based franchisee, will focus its full attention on the Hillsboro store once its new store in Clay Center is open.
Wendy’s is coming to Hillsboro, but don’t start drooling for its trademark old fashion hamburgers just yet.
Todd Eland, marketing person for Sunset Equities of McPherson, the franchisee of the store slated for Hillsboro, said the date of the opening won’t be known until Aug. 1.
“We’re excited about coming to Hillsboro,” Eland said, “but we’ve got a couple of other stores that are going to open in line in front of Hillsboro. We’re opening one in Clay Center at the end of the month. Once that one’s complete, we can turn the full attention of our team to Hillsboro.”
The future identity of the former McDonald’s building on East D Street became all but apparent with recent exterior remodeling. But the company has much more work to do before the business opens.
“It’ll be pretty quiet over there until right after the end of July,” Eland said. “On Aug. 1 you’ll see a lot of activity.
“We do our own construction,” he added. “We’ve built stores and remodeled locations in towns like Hillsboro, such as Scott City and Lyons. It’s something we kind of have down to a science.”
Sunset Equities owns 10 stores in Kansas, has some involvement in Iowa and even a few stories in Costa Rica.
“It’s a lot more fun to do business in Kansas,” Eland said. “We like those opportunities that are close to home—we can spend a lot more evening with our kids.”
“Hillsboro is the kind of town we’re used to being in,” he added. “We operate in several small towns, and we’re very successful in most locations.”
Eland said the owners want to hire from the local population, including a store manager.
“We try to hire locally and bring somebody in who’s going to run it like it’s their own,” he said.
“We are looking for management people there in Hillsboro. We want people who want to live there their whole life and make it their home.
“If they want to talk to us, we’d be glad to speak to them.”
Eland said Sunset Equities’ policy is to be a good corporate citizen.
“We very much believe in community involvement,” he said. “We support our schools, and do a lot with after-school proms, reading programs—any of those kinds of opportunities that come up.
“That’s kind of what we attribute our success to in small towns, whereas some other people haven’t been as successful.”
Another business advantage of small towns, Eland added, is the quality of employees.
“The quality of help is night and day,” he said. “In a small town you get people who are more loyal and more interested in the success of the business.
