McDonald India to double outlets in 3 years

The American fast food chain McDonald`s is being operated in the country by two franchisees - the Hardcastle Restaurant promoted by Amit Jatia runs the chains in the West and South and Vikram Bakshi-led Connaught Plaza Restaurants runs the outlets in the North and East. Together these two franchisees run 250 McDonald`s in the country now.

"We have about 250 McDonald`s outlets now and we will double the numer in the next three years. Hardcastle runs about 130 restaurants and we will take it to 250 outlets in the next three years with an investment of Rs 500 crore," McDonald`s India (West & South) vice-chairman Amit Jatia told PTI here.

The rest of the outlets will be added by Connaught Plaza, which has about 120 stores now. The combined investment will be to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore over the three-year expansion period, Jatia informed.

A significant number of the new outlets will be the drive -throughs, which are typical highway outlets where take-aways are encouraged.

McDonald`s has 45-50 drive-through outlets in the company and the franchisees are keen to more than double the format. "Drive throughs is a big focus for us. We want to more than double its reach. The investment is more for a drive through but we don`t give a breakup for the investment," Jatia said.

The company has tie-ups with Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, IndianOil to have drive throughs in their petrol pumps.

McDonald`s also plans to double its headcount in next three to four years by adding 2,500 people each year. "Today we have about 12,000 working with us. We will double this in the next three to four years," he said.

On the attrition level in the company he said, it is comparatively better at 30 percent head churn while the industry average is a high 70 percent.

The company has managed to keep its prices affordable despite high input costs, Jatia said, adding normally he hikes prices by 3-4 percent on an annual basis.