A gas station, a film set and a renamed sandwich shop.

McAlister’s Deli began in a building that had already been through two lives. The Oxford Eagle reported on 14 April 2016 that the original restaurant, on University Avenue in Oxford, Mississippi, had been a gas station before it was converted into a 1950s diner for the film “Heart of Dixie.” The paper said the restaurant was founded in 1989, when the retired dentist Dr. Don Newcomb bought the property. A later Oxford Eagle column, published on 9 January 2021, identified the building as the former Southland gas station and said that its two large garage doors were remnants of that use.

The entry on McAlister’s Corporation in the International Directory of Company Histories fills in the founder’s background. It says Newcomb grew up in Ripley, Mississippi, worked at a soda fountain as a teenager, earned a degree in dentistry from the University of Mississippi and, after military service, set up a dental practice in Oxford. There he developed rental properties and, in the early 1980s, ran franchises for other restaurant chains before deciding to open a restaurant of his own. After the film production finished with the diner set, the entry says, Newcomb bought it and opened a sandwich shop with his office manager, Debra Bryson, and his sons Chris and Neil.

The name came second. Both the 2016 Oxford Eagle article and the company history say the shop opened as “Chequers”, and that Newcomb changed the name because it was too similar to the Checkers fast-food chain. He renamed it McAlister’s, the surname of his wife’s parents; the company history gives the full early name as McAlister’s Gourmet Deli.

The 2016 article described the original store’s look in some detail: large green letters above a striped awning, checkered tile inside, garage doors along the side walls, a front lined with large windows, and walls hung with memorabilia, photographs of the original store and historic University of Mississippi pictures. The 2021 column reported that this original location was closing and would be sold, after a new McAlister’s opened on West Jackson Avenue in Oxford.

Franchising, new owners and a family of brands.

The chain grew through Mississippi college towns. The International Directory of Company Histories says a second restaurant opened in Hattiesburg in 1992, the year Newcomb closed his dental practice, followed by Tupelo in 1993 and Jackson in 1994, after which the company turned to franchising. Newcomb’s sons took operating and development roles as franchising expanded.

Control passed to professional managers at the end of the decade. The company history says Michael J. Stack became chief executive in October 1998 and led a management buyout with Phil Friedman through a holding company, Mississippi Holdings Inc.; English Wikipedia dates Newcomb’s sale of the company to Stack and Friedman to 1999. Newcomb stayed on as a director and kept the franchise rights for Kentucky. The company history says Stack stepped down as chief executive in 2002, and that Newcomb, his son Chris and Bryson later launched another Oxford restaurant concept, Newk’s, in 2004.

Private equity followed. Wikipedia records that the Atlanta firm Roark Capital Group acquired McAlister’s Deli in 2005, when the company was based in Ridgeland, Mississippi; Nation’s Restaurant News still gave Ridgeland as its base in 2012. By 2018 Fast Casual was describing Focus Brands, the Atlanta restaurant group in Roark’s portfolio, as McAlister’s parent company. Restaurant Dive reported on 20 February 2024 that Focus Brands had renamed itself GoTo Foods; the company’s announcement listed McAlister’s Deli among its seven brands, alongside Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, Moe’s Southwest Grill and Schlotzsky’s. Wikipedia gives the chain’s headquarters as Atlanta, and says the restaurants are mainly run by independent franchisees.

Design and documentation.

Coffee-house and deli chains carry their identity on many surfaces at once. A name and a mark sit on the street sign and the shopfront, then repeat on paper cups, sleeves, lids, carry-out bags, sandwich wraps and loyalty cards, and again on the menu board above the counter. Each of those surfaces is printed or built by different suppliers, often in different places, so a chain’s visual system has to survive changes of material, size and colour reproduction.

The menu board is where much of the design work shows. It has to hold a name, prices and category headings at reading distance, and over the past two decades many chains have moved from printed panels to screens, which changes how type, colour and photography are used. Interiors carry the identity too: counter fronts, seating, lighting, wall graphics and the colour of the walls themselves are part of how a chain presents its name.

Each guide below looks at who started the brand, who owns it now and how its name and mark appear, separating what independent dated sources record from what the company says about itself.

Garage doors, a Tea Bar and a community wall.

The McAlister’s look has been redrawn several times. The International Directory of Company Histories says that after the 1998 buyout the new owners hired a restaurant designer, Kathy Diamond of Scottsdale, Arizona, to bring continuity to the look of the restaurants, and the architect David Cromley to shrink a prototype that had become too large and costly. The same entry records a smaller food-court format, McAlister’s Select, which opened in the Northpark Mall in Ridgeland in 2002.

A decade later came a new prototype. Nation’s Restaurant News reported on 28 April 2012 that McAlister’s had debuted a refreshed design that spring, built at franchised restaurants in Lexington, Kentucky, and Aurora, Colorado, after testing in a remodelled company restaurant in Clinton, Mississippi. Its centrepiece was a stand-alone Tea Bar at the front counter. The chief executive, Frank Paci, told the magazine that the older design still had “knickknacks on the wall,” and that the new one was cleaner, with brighter colours and “a lot of greens,” dark green ceilings changed to white and new lighting; the original stores, he said, had brass rails and curtains from the mid-1990s. He also noted that the tea was served in a clear glass, and cited an advertising line, “Leave sweet tea to the professionals.”

The next step came under Focus Brands. Fast Casual reported on 16 August 2018 that McAlister’s would roll out a prototype in Atlanta with a new logo, new employee uniforms, sustainable packaging and new menu programming for children and families, based on customer research by its parent company. The design called for an open feel, a community table for large groups, and a community-themed mural and photo wall highlighting local patrons and landmarks, unique to each restaurant. The brand’s president, Joe Guith, described it in the company’s release as an evolution of the brand that had opened its doors in Oxford in 1989.

For a design guide, McAlister’s Deli shows how a chain born in a borrowed film set can keep returning to the same few ideas — green lettering, diner tile, tea and a neighbourhood room — through owners in Mississippi and Atlanta. Compare it with Jason’s Deli, a Texas deli chain founded in 1976, and Subway. For this guide we use deli green, tea gold and tile white with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep McAlister’s Deli’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.