McDonalds in Russia. A history.

On 8 March 2022 fast-food icon McDonald's announced that it would be temporarily closing all of its 850 outlets in Russia. In Russia, McDonald’s is a direct employer of the people working at most of its restaurants and has said that it will keep all of its 62,000 employees on full salary. I need to point out that the business model of McDonald’s is that of a real estate company where it rents prime locations with good footfall to franchisees who then operate McDonald’s restaurants. This is not the case in Russia where most, but not all, restaurants are operated directly by the company. Other companies such as Burger King do operate on a franchise system and this makes it far more difficult for them to pull out because of international contractual arrangements with their frachisees.
The first location opened in Pushkin Square in the heart of Moscow – as I see it, there could have been no better location in the USSR. The monument of Pushkin is an iconic location for first dates and has something literary, liberal, modern and opening up to a new world about it – or at least that is how I see it.
Bringing McDonalds to the Soviet Union was like bringing a piece of the US to the communist country but in fact it was not a piece of the US but rather a piece of Canada – the Soviet operation was managed by the Canadian branch of the company.
The idea apparently went back to 1976 during the Toronto Olympics when something easy and fast but good quality was sought for the Moscow Olympics. However, another invasion, this time of Afghanistan and the sanctions that followed put a stop to that. However once Gorbachov came to power and the USSR started to open up, plans for a McDonalds were revived. In 1988 the company applied for permission to open a branch in Russia, permission was granted, legend says that Gorbachov himself promoted the idea and on 31 January 1990 the first restaurant opened. An advertisement had been placed in the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily for staff. 30,000 applied, 600 were chosen. There were huge queues on opening day which can be seen in photographs from the McDonalds Corporation. I have heard, but cannot quote the source, that the opening day of McDonald’s was the most people served in a restaurant in one day in history. The photographs shown here from that date illustrate the point.
Another thing that amazed the locals was that the restaurant did not run out of food – a common problem in communist countries when food queues were common. However it did have one thing communist about it. It ran at a loss for a long time.
I was in Moscow for the first time in October 1992. Even after nearly three years of operation and by then with competing outlets, it was packed at the weekends with long queues to get in but during the week during the day it was easier. What I distinctly remember is the service was like nowhere I had ever been, or still have not been. The staff would shout that the cash till was available so diners would know to go up and make their order whilst being greeted by a happy smiling face – the exact opposite of what one had been greeted with in communist countries. One of the requirements for staff was that they had to keep smiling for the length of their shift – which is probably not very easy.
There were hamburgers in communist countries – for example I used to frequent a place opposite the railway station in Gdańsk and I have no doubt that people in the USSR had eaten a piece of meat inside two pieces of bread. What made it different was the atmosphere.
At the weekend in Moscow in the early nineties there were queues. One incident that happened to me was then I was with a friend and her brother and his girlfriend. It was decided that we would go to McDonald’s but the queue was over two hours to get in. Outside of McDonalds there were portable barriers of the type used in crowd control. I think on those barriers the approximate waiting time was written which is how we knew how long we would have to wait. However there were these youngsters who would get around the queue, probably they knew people in the kitchens and worked with them. So whilst we were parked in Pushkin Square, one of these youngsters, I would say aged around 14, took our orders. We had to wait quite a while and just as we thought that he had ran off with our money, he turned up, breathless with our order.
I would continue to go to McDonalds as it was quite a good place to meet people of the contrary gender. Later I preferred Russian style outlets such as Teremok, Mumu or Jolki Polki.
Around 1992 I recall an article in the Time comparing wages in many countries and suggested a good way of doing it was to compare how long people had to work to be able to afford a big mac with fries and coke. The article argued that McDonalds was a good measurement as it is the same everywhere.

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