McDonald’s stores reopen in Russia under new brand name

McDonald’s came to Russia in 1990. The opening of its first restaurant in Moscow’s Pushkin square marked a new geopolitical time during the Cold War. Nearly 30 years later, the US fast-food giant announced that it was leaving the country for good due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

For generations of Russians who grew up with McDonald’s as part of their pop culture and life, it was a sad farewell.

However, just a month later, the McDonald’s restaurants are opening up again.

How? But McDonald’s is no longer the same.

1. It has been renamed 'Vkusno-i tochka', which roughly translated to English means, “Tasty and that’s it”.
2. And no, McDonald’s does not own the restaurants anymore. Siberian businessman Alexander Govor’s firm GiD LLC is the new owner of the franchise. Govor as a McDonald’s licensee since 2015 has been helping the fast-food company expand into remote Siberia. He operated 25 restaurants.

    

3. The iconic golden arches of the McDonald’s logo is also gone and replaced by two slant lines and a solid circle. The logo shows two French fries and a burger.
4. The first restaurant reopened in Moscow’s Pushkin Square, the same first McDonald’s restaurant. 15 more restaurants are set to reopen initially in Moscow, 200 are to open by the end of June, and all 850 will reopen by the end of summer.
5. The crowd outside the first reopened restaurant was not as big as when the first McDonald’s restaurant had opened in 1990.

    

6. The exterior of the restaurants has changed, but the interiors are to remain the same.
7. Some items are missing on the menu like McDonald’s flagship Big Mac, McFlurry etc. However, the items being offered now cost a little less than the original McDonald’s prices.
8. Moreover, Russia has said that McDonald’s will have an option to buy its restaurants back within 15 years.

    

Reactions: People on Twitter are saying that the new logo of the franchise looks like a copy of various other businesses including an animal feed company, a burger chain, and even India’s Kotak Mahindra bank.