[cosmie]

It's not a corporate policy. I've personally had hours-long study sessions at McDonalds restaurants with just a drink purchase.

The article also mentions a group of women taking up an 8-person sitting area for hours at a time, nursing a single $1 coffee. For a four hour visit, this averages ~$0.03/seat/hr in revenue. These customers aren't truly dining, they're just congregating under the pretext of dining (by buying the minimal amount possible). _This_ is the type of behavior that would drive an individual store into implementing a 20-minute dining limit. Chances are it's loosely enforced for actual dining customers, but provides the necessary pretext for booting these people when the lunch rush begins and actual dining customers need somewhere to dine. If customers come to eat and can't find anywhere to sit, they'll start going elsewhere for food and the store will see a noticeable decline in revenue.

While it sounds harsh, a restaurant is a business that makes money by selling food. The dining area is meant for dining. Systematically abusing it for congregating, while providing marginally little revenue, is going to result in limitations being erected to discourage such behavior. Coffee shops do the same thing with time limits on wifi, which is a limitation that works well to discourage their typical customer base. This crowd is just in it for the space, so the limitation invoked in this case is a time limit on the space itself.

[10feet]

> It's not a corporate policy. I've personally had hours-long study sessions at McDonalds restaurants with just a drink purchase.

Just because it is not enforced where you are, does not mean it is not corporate policy. It can also depend on how busy the McDonalds is, I can imagine when it is after lunch, and the store is almost empty, they aren't going to kick anyone out.

[cosmie]

> Just because it is not enforced where you are, does not mean it is not corporate policy.

While I don't have access to their corporate policies directly, at least one store owner has claimed he isn't aware of such a policy[1]:

   Roger Muselman, owner of successful McDonald’s       
   restaurants in Kewanee and Geneseo, 
   said he hasn’t heard about putting time limits on 
   customers and that it will never happen here.

[1] http://www.starcourier.com/article/20140124/NEWS/140129412

[pickleport]

Why the tone? I didn't comment on the ethics of the policy.

[cosmie]

My apologies for any implied tone; it was unintentional. I used to manage a fast food restaurant (not McDonalds), so was attempting to explain the store's likely rational.