Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Restaurant |
Genre | Fast food |
Founded | November 4, 1975 (incorporation) [1] June 7, 1976 (first restaurant) |
Headquarters | Greenlane, Auckland , |
Number of locations | 169 (as of 2023 [update] ) [2] [3] |
Area served | New Zealand |
Key people | Kylie Freeland (Managing Director) [2] Malcolm Swan (General counsel) |
Products | |
Services | Franchising |
Parent | McDonald's Corporation |
Subsidiaries | Georgie Pie |
Website | mcdonalds |
McDonald's Restaurants (New Zealand) Limited [1] (also trading as "Macca's" [2] ) is the New Zealand subsidiary of the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. Its first location opened in 1976. [4] In 2017 McDonald's New Zealand had 167 restaurants operating nationwide, serving an estimated one million people each week. [2] The company earned revenues of over $250 million in the 2018 financial year. [5]
As with McDonald's locations worldwide, the franchise primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken, french fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes and desserts. In response to changing consumer tastes, the company has expanded its menu to include salads, fish, wraps, smoothies, and fruit. The company also operates the Georgie Pie and McCafé chains within many of its stores; through the latter McDonald's is the largest coffee shop brand in the country. [6]
McDonald's New Zealand operations are based in Greenlane, Auckland. [7]
The first McDonald's restaurant in New Zealand opened on Cobham Court in central Porirua on Monday 7 June 1976, however it was not officially opened until the following Saturday. The original menu featured the Big Mac (75 cents), Quarter Pounder (65c), Quarter Pounder with Cheese (75c), Filet-O-Fish (65c), cheeseburger (40c) and hamburger (30c). [8]
Problems were encountered opening the restaurant due to strict import laws at the time, which limited importing of overseas products that could be produced in New Zealand. The kitchen for the Porirua restaurant was imported on the condition that it was to allow local companies to reproduce it, and it was to be sent back after 12 months. However, the kitchen had been cemented into the floor and removing parts of it while still maintaining the restaurant operation meant it was impossible. The New Zealand affiliate eventually negotiated with the Corporation to import more kitchens in exchange for a large surplus of cheese the New Zealand Dairy Board (now Fonterra) had. [9]
Once the Porirua restaurant was open, there were additional problems with the supply chain, with frequent industrial unrest often shutting down suppliers without warning for weeks on end. An industrial dispute shut down the bun supplier in mid-1976, resulting in McDonald's staff having to drive all over Wellington to find substitute buns, and then cutting the sesame seed buns for the Big Mac using two bandsaws placed side-by-side. [10] Beef patties were initially supplied from the Gear Meat Company in Petone, although supply was haphazard until a purpose-built meat forming machine was acquired in 1977. Like many other companies at the time, Gear Meat was plagued by industrial unrest and closed down without warning in 1982, leaving McDonald's to import beef patties from Australia. The affiliate acquired Gear Meat's patty-forming machine and moved it to Auckland to secure production. [11] By coincidence, part of Gear Meat's former site now contains a McDonald's restaurant.
The second New Zealand restaurant opened in the old Auckland Savings Bank Building on Queen Street, Auckland in July 1977. Restaurants in New Lynn and Lower Hutt opened in 1978, being the first with drive-throughs. By the end of the decade, restaurants had also opened in Takapuna, Henderson, and Courtenay Place (central Wellington). [12]
By late 1987, there were 25 McDonald's restaurants across the North Island, in Whangārei, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Rotorua, Gisborne, Hastings, New Plymouth, Whanganui, Palmerston North, and Wellington. [13]
The first South Island restaurants opened on 3 November 1987 at Merivale and Linwood in Christchurch. [14] Problems finding franchisees meant the opening of the third restaurant at Riccarton was delayed until February 1988, while the franchisees of the Whangārei restaurant transferred south to the Merivale restaurant on the possibility of a second restaurant in the future. Both restaurants almost broke worldwide opening day records, just losing the title due to a poor exchange rate. [15] A branch opened in Dunedin on 13 December 1988. [16]
In 1990, McDonald's purchased a former car yard site for its Taupō restaurant, which opened in November that year. The site came with a decommissioned Douglas DC-3 aircraft, complete with intact cockpit. The plane has become a tourist landmark, and now contains a seating area for diners. [17] [18]
The 50th New Zealand McDonald's restaurant opened in 1991 at Chartwell Square Mall, Hamilton. The 100th restaurant opened five years later at the Auckland University of Technology. Breakfast meals were introduced in the same year, first at the Auckland Queen Street restaurant before expanding nationally. [4]
McDonald's purchased the fast-food chain Georgie Pie from Progressive Enterprises in 1996. The Georgie Pie chain closed in 1998, with half of the 32 restaurants converting to McDonald's and the remainder sold off. [19] In 1998, New Zealand's first McCafé opened in the Queen Street restaurant. [4]
From 1997 to 1999 the company endorsed McDonald's Young Entertainers , a televised talent show for young New Zealanders. [20]
In 2004, the Happy Meal children's menu celebrated 25 years since its introduction in 1979. In the same year, nutrition labelling was introduced to packaging on McDonald's core menu items. [4]
In 2009, the original Porirua McDonald's restaurant in Cobham Court closed, replaced by a new restaurant with drive-through a short distance away in Kenepuru Drive. [21]
In May 2013, McDonald's announced it would bring Georgie Pie back on a trial basis, selling a single pie flavour through several McDonald's restaurants in the Upper North Island. Later in October, it announced it would roll out Georgie Pie to all McDonald's restaurants nationwide, excluding those who could not accommodate the necessary equipment. [22] The Georgie Pie menu items were discontinued in September 2020.
In 2014 McDonald's introduced 'Create Your Taste' to New Zealand. The customer creates a gourmet burger from scratch on the touch-screen "kiosk" and the burger, fries and drink are delivered to them at their table. A related competition invited customers to submit their burger creations to the McDonald's website and relied on users to vote for their favourite design. The competition was pulled in July 2016 after website users created burgers with offensive names. [23]
Following the United States and Australia, McDonald's launched the All Day Breakfast menu in New Zealand on 4 May 2016. The menu consists of a limited range of breakfast products, which are:
All Day Breakfast was discontinued in 2021.
McDonald's celebrated 40 years in New Zealand on 7 June 2016; the Queen Street Auckland restaurant marked the anniversary with 1970s retro service and items on the original menu sold at their 1976 prices. [24] At that date, McDonald's had 166 restaurants operating in New Zealand; a 167th restaurant at Silverstream, Upper Hutt was closed awaiting rebuilding after it caught fire in February 2016. [25]
A man was shot dead by police after firing a shot at the Upper Hutt McDonald's in 2015. [26] He was later identified as Pera Smiler, 25 of Upper Hutt. [27]
In 2018, the Hastings restaurant became the first in the country to offer a menu written in te reo Māori. [28]
In February 2019, McDonald's extended its global Happy Meal Reader's Program to New Zealand where they replaced the Happy Meal toys with books to encourage reading among children. They announced to give away 800,000 copies of Roald Dahl books over the course of 12 months, where they will introduce a new book each month. [29] [30]
McDonald's announced McDelivery, a delivery service, would start being trialed in Auckland starting 20 July 2016 in New Lynn and Glenfield. All deliveries will require a $25 order and incur a $7.50 delivery fee. [31]
McDonald's New Zealand sells products consistent with its international markets – including the chain's signature product, the Big Mac. Items unique to the New Zealand menu include:
In 2016 [update] , McDonald's bought more than NZ$150 million worth of local produce for its New Zealand restaurants. [3]
In 2018, the McDonald's Cookie Time McFlurry was available through a week prior to in store launch on Uber Eats. [33]
McDonald's New Zealand has union representation. [34] This has led to demands for equal pay with other fast food sector employees, such as those in KFC. [35] There were also protests about favouritism of police officers and the accused harassment of one member staff for being gay. [36] The demand for higher wages ultimately led to a strike which began on 22 May 2013 in the Bunny St McDonald's in Wellington. [35]
In May 2013, the National Government reintroduced a youth minimum wage for 16- and 17-year-olds at 80 percent of the adult minimum wage. McDonald's was one of seven major companies employing young people to reject a youth minimum wage and insisting young employees be paid at least the adult minimum wage. [37]
A hamburger, or simply a burger, is a dish consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or chilis with condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish or a "special sauce", often a variation of Thousand Island dressing, and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger. Under some definitions, and in some cultures, a burger is considered a sandwich.
The Big Mac is a hamburger sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. It was introduced in the Greater Pittsburgh area in 1967 and across the United States in 1968. It is one of the company's flagship products and signature dishes. The Big Mac contains two beef patties, cheese, shredded lettuce, pickles, minced onions, and a Thousand Island-type dressing advertised as "special sauce", on a three-slice sesame-seed bun.
The cuisine of New Zealand is largely driven by local ingredients and seasonal variations. As an island nation with a primarily agricultural economy, New Zealand yields produce from land and sea. Similar to the cuisine of Australia, the cuisine of New Zealand is a diverse British-based cuisine, with Mediterranean and Pacific Rim influences as the country has become more cosmopolitan.
In Australia and New Zealand, a meat pie is a hand-sized pie containing diced or minced meat and gravy, sometimes with onion, mushrooms or cheese and is often consumed as a takeaway food snack.
Georgie Pie was a fast food chain owned by retailer Progressive Enterprises specialising in meat pies that hoped to be New Zealand’s own homegrown alternative to the global fast-food industry giants such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Burger King. The first Georgie Pie restaurant opened in 1977, and at its peak there were 32 restaurants across New Zealand. After running into financial difficulties, it was bought out by McDonald's in 1996, mainly for its restaurant locations. The last Georgie Pie store was closed in 1998.
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The Quarter Pounder is a hamburger sold by international fast food chain McDonald's, so named for containing a patty with a precooked weight of four ounces (113.4 g), or one quarter of a pound. It was introduced in 1971. In 2013, the Quarter Pounder was expanded to represent a whole line of hamburgers that replaced the company's discontinued Angus hamburger. In 2015, McDonald's increased the precooked weight to 4.25 oz (120 g).
The Filet-O-Fish is a fish sandwich sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. It was created in 1962 by Lou Groen, a McDonald's franchise owner in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood of Monfort Heights in Cincinnati, Ohio, in response to declining hamburger sales on Fridays due to the practice of abstaining from meat on that day. While the fish composition of the sandwich has changed throughout the years to cater to taste preferences and address supply limitations, the framework of its ingredients have remained constant; a fried breaded fish fillet, a steamed bun, tartar sauce and pasteurized American cheese.
The Big King sandwich is one of the major hamburger products sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King, and was part of its menu for more than twenty years. As of March 2019, it is sold in the United States under its 1997 Big King XL formulation. During its testing phase in 1996–1997, it was originally called the Double Supreme and was configured similarly to the McDonald's Big Mac—including a three-piece roll. It was later reformulated as a more standard double burger during the latter part of product testing in 1997. It was given its current name when the product was formally introduced in September 1997, but maintained the more conventional double cheeseburger format.
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A breakfast sandwich is any sandwich filled with foods associated with breakfast. Breakfast sandwiches are served at fast food restaurants and delicatessens, sold in supermarkets, or commonly made at home. Different types of breakfast sandwich include the bacon sandwich, the egg sandwich, and the sausage sandwich; or various combinations thereof, like the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. The breakfast sandwich is related to the breakfast roll.
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