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photo Monday's lunch crowd fills the Ringgold, Ga., McDonald's on opening day just six month after a tornado ripped through the North Georgia town.
photo The McDonald's in Ringgold sports a new facade Monday, opening day.
photo Workers search a McDonald's restaurant in Ringgold, Ga. Thursday, April 28, 2011, after a tornado slammed into the area Wednesday. Seven people were killed in Georgia's Catoosa County, including Ringgold, where a suspected tornado flattened about a dozen buildings and trapped an unknown number of people.

Big Macs are back in Ringgold, Ga., more than six months after a tornado devastated the McDonald's restaurant on Alabama Highway, laying waste to much of the city's business district.

A hastily erected sign in May promised that happy meals would soon be back, and on Monday the company finally fulfilled its promise.

McDonald's' largest-sized restaurant seats 170 patrons, up from 90 customers in the previous building, and managers increased staff by 20 workers to 84, said Darlene McCannon, operations manager for the region.

About 40 of those workers were rehired at the restaurant after April's tornadoes forced some employees to temporarily relocate to stores in Fort Oglethorpe, and Dalton, Ga.

"We wanted to make sure we brought it back the same or better," McCannon said. "This is the biggest size, they don't make them any bigger than this."

The restaurant is stocked with rich wood highlights, a cleaner, sleeker design and soft-touch surfaces throughout.

John and Carolyn Dorsey sat down on some of the new, softer bench seats with grins on their faces and empty trays on their table.

"We came up from Dalton just to help them out and eat lunch with them," John Dorsey said, gesturing to the employees.

"Yeah, the food tasted fresher, and the service was good too," Carolyn Dorsey added.

Ringgold's corporate-owned McDonald's also built a decorative community table under a wooden arch, installed flat screen televisions and upscale landscaping, features that combine to make the restaurant "amazing," said manager Jessika Seitz.

Seitz was working the drive-through window when the April storm hit, and just barely had time to leap into the freezer before the restaurant fell down around her.

"When I first came back to the new store, my heart started beating so fast," she said. "I was scared."

But once she got to work, Seitz quickly settled in -- especially when returning customers recognized her face.

"I didn't realize how much of an impact we have on the community," she said.

Jeremy Patten's young son and daughter have been observing the work-in-progress McDonald's for the past three months on the way to daycare, his father said as the children scrambled around the restaurant's new, smaller PlayPlace.

"Of course I told him that we'd bring him in here," Patten said. "I have two kids. I can't help but come."

Contact staff writer Ellis Smith at esmith@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6315.

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