Franchise family

After decades in Little Rock, Arkansas, and St. Louis, Dean DiMichele has returned to Indiana.

He’s made Portland the home base of his McDonald’s operation.

DiMichele, in partnership with his daughter Nicole and son Chad, have taken over as owner/operators of 13 Indiana McDonald’s restaurants, including the Portland location.

The DiMicheles acquired the Hoosier restaurants from four different owners including Rick Reidenbach, who had owned the Portland restaurant on Meridian Street since 1996, in deals that closed in December and January. Their portfolio includes McDonald’s locations in Hartford City, Bluffton, Marion, Fort Wayne, Logansport, Monticello, Delphi and West Lafayette.

While making those purchases, they sold five McDonald’s locations in Arkansas to two different entities.

“Just trying to put all this together, it was like a jigsaw puzzle,” said DiMichele, who lives in Fort Wayne but has made the Portland office his base of operations in Indiana. “But it all worked.”

He great up in northwest Indiana, graduating from Highland High School in 1976 and going on to Purdue University. While in college, he met his uncle’s best friend, who owned McDonald’s restaurants in the Canton, Ohio, area.

DiMichele was immediately hooked.

“I was just intrigued by the business. I said to myself, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” he said.

“Just hearing the stories from this owner operator of things that he did with his restaurants and how he grew them … how he gave back to the community,” he added. “It was just phenomenal, the success that he had. I just found that very interesting.”

DiMichele started working at a McDonald’s and working his way up the ladder. At 27, he applied to become an owner/operator. He got his first restaurant inside a St. Louis hospital when he was 30.

He added a second restaurant a year later and another the year after that. Eventually, seeking more room to grow, he sold off his St. Louis restaurants and moved to Little Rock, where he had as many as six locations.

DiMichele returned to Indiana both for the opportunity to be closer to home and to grow his operation.

“We’re going to grow this,” he said, though he added that no additional purchases are currently in the works. “We’re not done. … We’re going to double in size … probably in the next five years. …

“It will be just a matter of time.”

Part of that desire for growth is to continue to have greater opportunities for his children, each of currently own one of the group of 13 franchises. The plan is to shift the business to them over time.

They each have their areas of expertise, with Nicole focusing on marketing and human resources while Chad is more targeted toward strategy and numbers.

“The year I was born was the year my parents bought their first restaurant, so I was born into the business,” said Nicole in a press release. “From playing with Happy Meal toys to learning how to count money in the drive-thru, I’ve loved growing up in the business and am excited for this next step.”

While the Portland McDonald’s went through a renovation in 2018, the DiMicheles are already moving forward with plans at some of their other locations. They will break ground on a new site for the south Marion restaurant in June. In August, they will tear down the Hartford City location and rebuild a new restaurant — it will have a similar look to Portland but with a smaller footprint — at the same location with plans to be open again before Thanksgiving.

DiMichele said thus far the Portland location has been his highest-volume site. And he emphasized the family’s goal of being involved in the community, noting that he is planning something special for around this year’s Tri-State Antique Tractor and Engine Show in August.

“Where were came from we were heavily involved in the communities, the police department, fire department,” said DiMichele, whose family received the 2020 Sam Perroni Volunteer Award at Ronald McDonald House Charities in December. “We’re going to do the same thing here.

“We’re good supporters, whether it’s the baseball teams, basketball teams, soccer. We did all that in Little Rock and we plan on doing the same thing here.”