Saturday, July 21, 2007

Happy Meals on Wheels


Mickey D delivers? You bet. While Americans suffering from a Big Mac attack typically pull up to the drive-through window, in the developing world the fast-food chain increasingly does the driving. In traffic-choked cities from Manila to Montevideo, McDonald's deploys fleets of motor scooters to get hot food to customers fast. "I'm too lazy to go out and stand in line," confesses Nada Abou el Soud, a Cairo high school student. She says she calls in an order for a Mc- Chicken combo meal at least once a week, dropping about $4.25 each time, including a 70 cents delivery fee.

All told, McDonald's delivers in some 25 cities, with a half-dozen more on deck. The company just launched deliveries in Taipei, with 1,000 drivers, is expanding Shanghai to citywide service this summer, and is testing the concept in Beirut and Riyadh. In Egypt, where the setup was pioneered in 1995, deliveries now account for 27% of all McDonald's revenue and up to 80% at some restaurants. Globally, delivery sales are expected to total more than $110 million in 2007, up from $90 million last year, the company says. While that's spare change for the $21.6 billion giant, the business is growing by 20% to 30% annually, more than triple the chain's overall rate.

read the entire Business Week article here

2 comments:

  1. I heard about this when I had to sub-teach one day and was scheduled to show the movie "Super-Size Me." I had to watch the first 1 hr 30min over and over again 4 times that day and another 3 times on a different day!!! Lets just say that I have not been to McD's since! I had no idea that they deliver...well, at least they don't deliver where I live.

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  2. I've seen "Super-Size Me," too. And read the book "Fast Food Nation." After you have seen the film and read the book you'll never go to another fast food joint ever again.

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