Their explanation of what went wrong is the story of a U.S. company that didn't know what local Chinese managers were doing—and in some cases, couldn't figure out. Local plant documents and rules weren't translated from Chinese into English, and even if they had been, OSI's American managers didn't often visit.
BEIJING: US chain McDonald's has apologised after a sign telling black people they were banned from entering a branch in southern China prompted outrage online, following reports of discriminatory treatment towards Africans in the city.
Case studies usually agree on how this happened. KFC won this food fight because it localized better and faster, while McDonald's moved into the Chinese market with an outdated recipe for success that had worked when it expanded into other markets.
By opting for a royalty cut rather than doing the dirty work itself, McDonald's is hoping that CITIC's knowledge of the Chinese market and Carlyle Group's expertise as an asset manager can propel growth to levels McDonald's couldn't accomplish going it alone.
McDonald's restaurants in China offer several Chinese dishes, such as youtiao (油条, Chinese deep-fried dough) and cakes with taro filling (a kind of sweet potato). Additionally, green tea is not only used to make teas but also used in sweets and hamburger buns, which gives them a vivid green color.
McDonald's got its start in China in the early '90s. Today, the chain has more than 4,500 restaurants in mainland China and Hong Kong with considerable room for growth. But it has faced headwinds along the way including lockdowns due to Covid-19 and competition from rivals like Yum Brands -owned KFC.
A McDonald's China spokesperson told Sixth Tone on Thursday that the name change was made to meet “the needs of business development” after the fast food chain sold a bulk of its China and Hong Kong operations to financial conglomerate CITIC Group and American investment company Carlyle Capital in January.
The $2.08 billion deal covers the fast food chain's franchise rights for the next 20 years in mainland China and Hong Kong. Of the three parties, state-owned Citic will have the controlling stake of 52 percent. American investment firm Carlyle has 28 percent, and McDonald's has the remaining 20 percent.
McDonald's opened not long after that, in 1990. Today, KFC and McDonald's are the top-grossing American fast-food chains in China, with KFC consistently leading ahead of McDonald's. “Fried chicken is a bit closer to the Chinese palate than hamburgers, so KFC has had a greater opportunity to expand,” Dong says.
CITIC Ltd held 32% of the business, with CITIC Capital and Carlyle holding 20% and 28%, respectively. McDonald's retained the remaining 20%, the companies said in a statement at the time. After the stake sale, CITIC Ltd will retain 10% of the business.
McDonald's and KFC are by far the two most popular fast-food brands in China, boasting over 4,905 and 8,675 restaurants, respectively, as of 2022 Q3.
China is actually home to the most KFC stores in the world, with more than 5,600 locations. In 2017, the company generated almost $5 billion in China. According to Yum China , the company that operates KFC in China, the fast food chain is the largest in the country.
Golden Arches is the moniker of choice in China
Per CNN Money, McDonald's name in China was "Maidanglao" which is a Chinese version of the word McDonald's.
In China, McDonald's biggest competitor is KFC—another American fast food giant. KFC does exceptionally well in China, operating 8,441 stores as of March 31, 2022.
A food safety scandal has engulfed China's largest meat producer after an undercover investigation showed workers using meat that had dropped on the floor, wearing dirty smelly uniforms and forging staff health certificates.
KFC (肯德基; pinyin: Kěndéjī) is a fast-food restaurant chain founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1952. KFC specializes in selling fried chicken and is known to have diversified the fast-food market by challenging the dominance of the chicken burger.
At the end of 2021, of the 98 countries for whom data was available, Pakistan ($27.4 billion of external debt to China), Angola (22.0 billion), Ethiopia (7.4 billion), Kenya (7.4 billion) and Sri Lanka (7.2 billion) held the biggest debts to China.
Arcos Dorados operates its McDonald's-branded restaurants under two structures: company-operated restaurants and franchised restaurants. Arcos Dorados owns, manages and operates approximately 75 percent of its restaurants.
Given that McDonald's was started in the United States, it should come as no surprise that the United States still has the most McDonald's of any country in the world.
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect.
Lee and De Yu assumed ownership of the McDonald's business in Taiwan on June 1, which included approximately 400 restaurants, more than 90 percent of which were previously corporately owned. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
McDonald's slogan in Chinese is 我就喜欢 (wo jiu xihuan). The second word in this sentence is used to emphatically contradict what someone else has said.