Paul Sims/SDN Bill Cunningham stands with a sledgehammer at the former McDonald’s location on Highway 12 and is pictured with a sign calling for those interested to apply for work at Bojangles’. Crews are expected to begin demolition today on the former McDonald’s to make way for the Bojangles restaurant. The former burger restaurant was his first McDonald’s location. He retired in 2007 and will return to the restaurant business with the new restaurant, which specializes in “Southern comfort food,” Cunningham said.

By PAUL SIMS
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A Starkville man has come full circle in his restaurant career in the community.
Bill and Pat Cunningham owned seven McDonald’s restaurants and sold them in 2007 after working 35 years with the company, Bill Cunningham recalled in a prepared statement.
He says they spent two and a half years traveling with family.
“I didn’t enjoy it,” he said of retirement. “It just wasn’t Cunningham. It just wasn’t me.”
They soon found themselves searching for another challenge, he said, so they started looking at research and asking “’What’s not here?’”