(5 Sep 2012) McDonald’s Corporation, the fast food chain that brought the hamburger to the world, is opening what may be its first vegetarian-only restaurants.
The world’s biggest hamburger chain said on Tuesday that the locations in India will serve only vegetarian food because of customer preferences in the region.
As McDonald’s faces rising competition and a volatile world economy, it has said it will focus on offering more food options that cater to local tastes in order to improve sales.
Last month, the company said a key revenue measure came in flat for July, which was its worst showing in more than nine years. The figure had grown every month since April 2003.
Fourteen-year old student Nandita Sharma is a regular visitor at a McDonald’s outlet in the heart of New Delhi.
She said the vegetarian-only restaurants will help the company make more profits in India.
“If they are opening this chain so actually they are increasing their profits.They are supporting the demands of people, it’s gaining popularity in every place and every area of the country,” she said.
The company could not immediately say when the restaurants would open or how many there would be.
McDonald’s said its restaurants in India do not sell beef or pork, and that the kitchens are separated into sections for cooking vegetarian and non-vegetarian food.
They have menu items that cater to local tastes, such as the Maharaja Mac, which is a Big Mac made with chicken patties instead of beef.
It also offers a McAloo Tikki, a burger made with a spicy breaded potato patty, red onions, tomatoes and a “special vegetable sauce.”
New Delhi resident Surinder Singh said McDonald’s was only following the worldwide trend towards vegetarianism.
“Most of the people used to eat meat and all that but now the people have changed again,” he said.
The opening of the vegetarian-only restaurants “further speaks to McDonald’s efforts to cater to local tastes,” the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said. Without providing details, it said the restaurants will be in areas that are popular pilgrimage destinations.
McDonald’s said the new restaurants are the only ones it is aware of that will serve only vegetarian food. However, local franchises in India and other regions may already have meatless menus.
For religious reasons, beef is not eaten by Hindus, who make up the majority of India’s population of about 1.2 billion people.
Information Technology consultant Abhishek Sharma said the veg-only outlets will attract a large number of the pure vegetarians in India.
“People want to eat more vegetarian because it is good for health,” he said.
McDonald’s has more than 33,500 locations around the world, but only about 250 are in India.
In 2002, McDonald’s agreed to donate 10 (m) million US dollars to Hindu and other groups in the US to settle lawsuits that accused the chain of mislabelling french fries and hash browns as vegetarian.
The vegetable oil used to prepare the fries and hash browns had contained traces of beef for flavouring purposes.
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