McDonald’s restaurants in Iceland sold their last hamburgers on Saturday night as the fast food giant pulled out of the country. Rising food costs forced executives to pull the plug on operations in Iceland. Thousands of people lined up at the fast food giant’s three Icelandic restaurants. The world's biggest restaurant chain announced its outlets were packed in the last few days of business. Managers said they were selling 10,000 burgers a day. A customer called Siggi told the Reuters news agency: "It's my last chance for a while to have a real Big Mac. With the economy as it is, I won't be traveling abroad any time soon." He added: "It's not that I'm a big fan of McDonald's, but a Big Mac now and then adds to variety."
A combination of things led to MacDonald’s closing its doors in Iceland. The country was hit particularly hard by the global financial crisis. Many of its banks collapsed, causing a lack of confidence and a sharp decrease in the value of Iceland’s currency. This greatly increased the cost of importing food from abroad. Another factor that caused McDonald’s to close was a global trading rule that it must buy ingredients from Germany. The ‘Iceland Review’ newspaper reported: "The low exchange rate in addition to high tariffs have doubled the company's expenses for meat, cheese, vegetables and other products and challenged its profitability.” The paper said a new burger restaurant would start using Icelandic produce.
http://breakingnewsenglish.com/0910/091031-mcdonalds.html
No comments:
Post a Comment