A new McDonalds restaurant opens every three hours somewhere on this planet. On October 13, it was Indiasand Delhisturn to start adding to the 33-million customers who gorge on McDonalds food everydaywhich includes 2.5 million pounds of just french fries. Adding up to total sales of $30 billion (Rs 1,05,000 crore) a year. A queue longer than the one of visa seekers outside the American Embassy formed immediately. There was even police bandobast.
The restaurant at Delhis upmarket Vasant Vihar, bang next to an outlet of homegrown junk food market leader Nirulas, will be able to make 600 chicken burgers an hour. Fish burgers will roll out 150 to an hour, and vegetable burgers at an astounding 1,000 per hour. In India with a wholly-owned subsidiary and two joint ventures, in Mumbai and Delhi, McDonalds invested about three years and over Rs 50 crore even before serving the first burger. Much of that time went into hunting for the right real estate and agonising over the right product mix. For instance, beef is the principal ingredient of McDonalds burgers across the world. Should it be served in India?
The result: no beef, dedicated equipment and utensils for vegetarians (vegetable products are prepared in designated areas of the kitchen, separate from all other menu items), sauces developed specially for India and even staff visiting cards in Hindi and English. At prices that go against standard TNC practice of keeping the tab firmly premium (see chart). But then, McDonalds prices are a legend by themselves. Every spring, The Economist publishes the annual Big Mac Index, which uses the price of a McDonalds Big Mac to calculate the values of currencies across the world: whether currencies are over- or under-valued.
Could that explain the paranoia at the press meet 36 hours before the outlet opened when we asked about the proposed pricing? No sirree, thats a secret, was the answer: just wait till the opening. The reason, according to Brad Trask, spokesperson, McDonald International: "Prices are competitive information. We cant let the competition know our prices. Once that information is out of our hands we dont know where it will go." Till the outlet finally opened its doors to the public, the pricing was known only to the top managers.
You move up the queue and enter the sanctum sanctorum of gastronomic cool, for school and college kids turned out in their best comprise the bulk of the customers. Clearly, McDonalds is where its happening. Your next stop is the overworked girl who has to take your order and ensure that you are served up your burger and cola in 60 seconds flat. With a smile, one of the many things the staff got trained in at Jakarta. For thats the awesome clockwork precision McDonalds promises and delivers.
The surging crowd pushes you up to the first floor where tables are neatly laid out. The place is jam-packed. Dozens of teenagers use packets of french fries as the excuse to admire the other sex. "This is the real stuff," says one young man to his lady friend. And someone else says: "Man, this is like 15 minutes in the US!" A phalanx of silent McWorkers keep mopping the floor incessantly to maintain perfect cleanliness.
McDonalds plans to open three more outlets in Delhi and an outlet on Mumbais Linking Road by the year-end. The next outlet to open by the end of this month will also be in Delhi. It wont be the biggestthats in Moscow seating 850 people; it wont be the busiestthats in Beijing which serves 80,000 people a day; but going by the initial response, itll be something the urban Indian is looking forward to.
