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Ronald McDonald had difficulty settling in this country
In this country, McDonald’s and Burger King underestimated their local rivals. Here, the two giant international chains are simply not fast food.
The continued success of restaurants fast food is undeniable and is largely, if not entirely, due to North American chains McDonald’s It is Burger King.
It’s been a long time since McDonald’s went from selling a diet exclusively to Americans to being loved around the world. Figures from last year confirm this: 40,275 restaurants from prison serve 69 million people per dayresulting in revenues greater than 20 billion euros per year.
Burger King is going the same way. Although it has half of the restaurants in competition, it earns more than 1.7 billion a year with its 15.7 million daily customers.
The numbers don’t lie and the restaurants are truly a hit in more than 100 countries in which they maintain operations – minus one.
At VietnamMcDonald’s and Burger King have only 20 and 11 locations respectively and seem unable to compete with local restaurants.
When McDonald’s opened in the Asian country in 2014, we have to admit: madness sets in. Vietnamese have waited hours for a taste of classic burgers, and McDonald’s is reportedly already planning to open 100 locations over 10 years, but quickly — and contrary to the company’s trend of success in Asian countries — enthusiasm faded.
Just like its competitor, Burger King, which reportedly plans to open 16 restaurants by 2016. To date, it has never achieved this goal. But what happened?
“Slow food” for envy or lack of chicken?
Basically, the rationale for the bizarre phenomenon indicates little or nothing more than sandwiches banh miloved by Vietnamese and easily and quickly obtained in all corners of the country.
“In the United States, the fast food it’s popular because you can have it [a comida] at the time. Vietnamese cuisine is the same. You can have your bowl of pho or your Bánh mì maybe faster than McDonald’s“, told CNBC, in 2018, the co-founder of the Vietnamese digital media company Vietcetera, Hao Tranexplaining how it “goes against the value proposition” of American chains in Vietnam.
Money spent by the Vietnamese for food, 78% among others, in 2018, for local sellersaccording to the European Commission. Only 1% went to jail fast food — figures that are largely due to the abundant presence of local food kiosks, which overlap with the number of restaurants in fast food.
In the last quarter of 2022, there were 550,000 catering establishments in the country. An overwhelming 430,000 were traditional restaurants; only 82,000 were fast-food chains, according to the Vietnamese Kitchen Culture Association.
At KFCthe first chain to have opened its doors in Vietnam, recorded great difficulties to install. The mark set to open 10 national restaurants was only achieved seven years after the first store opened.
The solution of the giant producer of the famous Kentucky fried chicken was simple and effective: change menu to make it more attractive in an already crowded Vietnamese food industry. In April 2022, the company already had, according to Statista, 153 stores — the second restaurant chain with the most establishments in the country.
But it was not just the introduction of new products that attracted the difficult Vietnamese customer. You prices practices matter a lot and at half price, a meal purchased from local vendors will feed twice as many people, according to Numbeo.
O split factor also applies to specialists. While traditional food, mostly chicken, is meant to be shared between families, the predominant diet of burgers that Vietnamese find at McDonald’s and Burger King is “individualistic” – and does not seem to be to the taste of the locals.
Tomás Guimarães, ZAP //
