NY Times: Russia Becomes a Magnet for U.S. Fast-Food Chains

[alp227]

For years, McDonald’s, which opened its first restaurant on Pushkin Square in 1990 and generated gigantic lines, was the only American fast-food chain in Russia. McDonald’s now operates 279 restaurants in Russia.

But other chains are flocking in. Burger King has opened 22 restaurants, mostly in mall food courts, in two years. Carl’s Jr. has 17 restaurants in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Wendy’s has opened two restaurants including a flagship on Arbat Street in Moscow, and plans 180 throughout Russia by 2020. The Subway sandwich chain has opened about 200 shops in Russia, working through several franchisees. Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, operates a co-branded chicken restaurant chain in Russia, called Rostik’s-KFC, and Il Patio in the Italian food segment. Yum now has about 350 restaurants in Russia.

Paving the way has been Russia’s development in many cities of the modern infrastructure needed for fast food to flourish — including malls with food courts, highways with drive-through locations, and specialty suppliers of frozen foods and packaging.

Moreover, Russian consumers are increasingly affluent, partly because of the trickle down from the nation’s lucrative oil exports. And though they still trail far behind the average household income of Americans — $43,539 in the United States versus $7,276 here — Russian consumers tend to have a large portion of their money for discretionary spending.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/global/russia-becomes-a-magnet-for-american-fast-food-chains.html?pagewanted=all

and will the lower health quality and environmental impact of these restaurants lead to a slide in economic quality also?

[ixion]

1. That 'magnet' will also attract Adult Onset Diabetes

I hope the Russians realize that.

[izquierdista]

2. I doubt they eat there often enought for that

Fast food is NOT where you go for lunch in the FSU, it is something you only occasionally splurge on. These franchises are in the expensive districts of the big cities, and the average Russian never sees one, let alone eats there regularly.

The fact that they are restaurants at all puts them out of reach of 95% of the population. The Soviets never thought much of the restaurant business, so it never really developed there, and you can go to a fairly large size town, and outside of restaurants in the larger hotels, there really is no place to go out to eat. Many times, after an unproductive walk around the town I was visiting and not finding a restaurant, I would end up buying some bread, cheese, and kolbasa at a market and washing that down with some kvass.

The American custom of having fast food available at every turn still hasn't made it in large parts of the world. You will notice in the article that it mentions that most of the outlets are in shopping malls, another American import. They still live like we did in America before the invention of the mall, where going out to eat was a rare occasion and meals cooked at home was the norm.

[ixion]

3. The ONLY reason a franchise would set up in an area would be if they thought

there would be a profit in doing so. If no one were going to eat there, there would be no profit, hence no reason to spend a few million setting up the franchise.

You may be right, and I may be way off mark, but I'm going to stick with profit motive.