The new owner of the restaurant chain, Alexander Govor, promised that the taste will not change and that he will try to make it better. “We hope that the number of clients will not decrease but increase. Especially since it is now a fully Russian company,” Govor said.
Govor, 62, operated 25 restaurants under the McDonald’s franchise in several Siberian cities since 2015, until he reached an agreement to purchase the business on May 19, three days after McDonald’s reported its exit from the Russian market. .
McDonald’s had been established in the country for 30 years and was one of the first windows that the country, which was still the Soviet Union, had towards the Western world. That is why it was a very popular brand and represented about 9% of the turnover of the American group.
“We try to do everything so that our customers do not notice any difference, neither in atmosphere nor in taste nor in quality,” said the group’s general director, Oleg Paroyev.
Modified names and neutral packaging
On Sunday morning, before the scheduled opening time, at noon local time, dozens of people were waiting in front of the brand’s most emblematic store in Pushkin Square in Moscow.
This was the historic restaurant where the first McDonald’s opened, with huge lines, in January 1990.
“Millions of customers are going to have the chance to come to their favorite restaurant again,” Paroyev said at the opening, where Govor was applauded by the crowd. “He’s delicious, good and not expensive,” enthused Oleg, a 31-year-old logistics specialist who was one of the first customers to order from him. “I wouldn’t say it’s nostalgia, but rather habit,” he added.
Reopening on June 12.
Dozens of people line up outside the former McDonald’s on Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
Reuters
The first McDonald’s.
It opened its doors, with huge queues, in January 1990.
Reuters
Anna, a 45-year-old accountant, celebrated that when McDonald’s was thought to have closed, it reopened.
“That’s great,” she exclaimed as she finished her fries.
On Monday another 50 stores will open their doors and later the chain expects to reopen between 50 and 100 restaurants per week throughout the country.
Paroyev said they had to remove some menu items that directly reference McDonald’s, such as the McFlurry and the Big Mac. The packaging has become neutral, as no item can refer to the McDonald’s group.
Paroyev said prices for the burgers would be slightly higher than the US chain’s due to inflation in Russia, but said they would remain “affordable.”
The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobianin, visited this emblematic restaurant on Sunday morning, and assured in the Telegram message that “the quality of the service would remain the same.”
McDonald’s, which had temporarily closed its restaurants in Russia at the beginning of March, announced on May 16 that it was definitively withdrawing from the country and that it was selling all its operations, justifying this decision by the need to “remain uncompromising” with respect to its “values “.