Quite recently, we could celebrate an interesting event – 35 years since the opening of the first McDonald’s restaurant in Russia. This event at the time became a real sensation, arousing great interest and gathering such a queue that it got into the Guinness Book of Records. That day, President Boris Yeltsin also visited the restaurant, which emphasized the significance of the moment.
McDonald’s opened in Moscow on January 31, 1990, on Pushkin Square. However, the path to this event was long: negotiations with the Soviet authorities took 14 years. Interestingly, the company presented itself as Canadian to simplify the approval process, sending the president of its Canadian division to Moscow. The project invested $50 million to build a plant that produced buns and processed potatoes daily.
It was expected that a thousand people would visit the restaurant on the opening day, but in fact, by the time of the opening, 5 thousand people had already gathered, and in just one day, McDonald’s received 30 thousand visitors, setting a record for the number of customers on the first working day. The restaurant offered hamburgers to its guests, which were completely new to the Soviet audience, and many noted their taste and unusualness. At the same time, some critics claimed that the high prices for the dishes “pumped” money out of the pockets of citizens, given the low salaries of that time.
In 1990, a regular hamburger cost 1.5 rubles, and a Big Mac cost 3 rubles 75 kopecks. However, McDonald’s offered a new level of service, which surprised Soviet visitors: smiling and friendly staff became a real revelation for Soviet visitors. The opening of McDonald’s in Russia was a landmark event that opened the doors for international brands on the Russian market. This event still arouses interest and remains a subject of study.
Since then, hundreds of McDonald’s restaurants have opened in the country, but today not a single one remains. Instead, an alternative has appeared on the market – the Vkusno i tochka chain.