It was the dead of winter – January 31, 1990 – but people still came out in droves. Grainy CNN TV footage shows lines snaking at the door and throngs of people inside, trying Big Macs for the first time.
The Pushkin Square location was huge, with the capacity to accommodate hundreds of people. It was the largest McDonald’s restaurant in the world at the time. Inside, the fast food was very busy. In many ways it looked like any other McDonald’s of the time. But there was a hammer and sickle flag under the golden arches and an international theme inside, with a model of London’s Big Ben in the dining room.
McDonald’s arrival in Moscow was about more than Big Macs and fries, noted Darra Goldstein, Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit professor emeritus of Russian at Williams College. It was the starkest example of glasnost in action, Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbechev’s attempt to open his crumbling country to international relations.
“There was a really visible crack in the iron curtain,” she said. “It was very symbolic of the changes that were happening. About two years later, the Soviet Union would collapse.
After opening this first place, McDonald’s expanded its reach in the country. Last week, there were about 850 active sites in Russia.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted McDonald’s to change course, at least temporarily. On Tuesday, the company announced it would suspend operations at those restaurants, following similar moves by other Western businesses and pressure from critics.
For Goldstein, this moment is just as symbolic, but much less hopeful.
“If the opening of McDonald’s in 1990 symbolized the beginning of a new era in Soviet life, an era with more freedoms, then the current exit from the company represents not only the closing of the company, but of society as a whole,” she said.
How McDonald’s came to Moscow
Opening McDonald’s in Russia was not easy.
George Cohon, who oversaw McDonald’s operations in Canada from the early 1970s to the 1990s, led the campaign to bring McDonald’s to life in Moscow. It took 14 years to achieve this.
In his book, To Russia With Fries (with an introduction by none other than Gorbachev), Cohon detailed the difficult process of opening this first site.
“On the Soviet side, there was very little real understanding of what establishing or operating a chain of McDonald’s restaurants entailed,” he writes. “For our part, we had to identify suitable sites (the instinct of the Soviets seemed to be to put us behind hotel elevator shafts or somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow; our instincts, of course, were pretty much there). reverse). »
Finding a viable supply chain was perhaps more urgent than finding a suitable location. McDonald’s needed a steady supply of patties and potatoes for the thousands of people who poured in each day.
“We had to make sure that it would be possible to source raw materials from Russia,” he said. Cohon and other team members visited local food processing plants and found they were lacking. McDonald’s has decided to create its own.
“Without reliable infrastructure, we were going to have to build one,” Cohon wrote. “We were going to have to go out into the countryside and develop a network of suppliers that didn’t exist before. »
When McDonald’s finally opened in 1990, some were skeptical and thought it wouldn’t last.
“Everything will deteriorate. We don’t know how to run a restaurant like this,” Andrei Grushin, an engineer who visited the restaurant on opening day, told The Washington Post at the time.
But McDonald’s efforts paid off.
Service with a smile
One of the defining characteristics of McDonald’s Moscow location, at least on that first day, was the friendly staff.
“They’re always smiling,” a young employee told CNN reporters on opening day. “As you know, in Moscow, not in every restaurant, you can find smiling people. »
Another employee told CBC that when she smiled at people, they asked what was wrong. “They think I’m making fun of them,” she said.
At that time, in the Soviet Union, “the catering service was really terrible,” said Goldstein of Williams College. “It was rude, the places were dirty. There was often no food that was on the list. »
McDonald’s was an “almost magical place where food was always replenished and people were smiling at you,” she said. “It was more than just a place to buy American burgers. »
The burgers themselves weren’t as exciting, at least not for some customers.
“I don’t like it at all,” one man told CBC of the food, shaking his head. Another said he liked the kitchen, but “expected more”. The meal was expensive. A meal could cost the average consumer half a day’s wages, according to the CBC.
Olga Berman, who grew up in Moscow before immigrating to the United States in 1993, recalls a trip to McDonald’s with her family as a child.
“We didn’t really go out to eat a ton. So that was a huge experience in itself, going to a restaurant,” she said. She remembers McDonald’s as a “sparkling novelty,” she said. “It was really bright. It was super clean,” she added. “It was an experience. It didn’t look like the fast food I know today. It was like going to a real restaurant. »
And the food ? “I don’t even remember what the food tasted like,” she said.
Christina Frankopan grew up in London. As a teenager, she went to Moscow for a few weeks to perfect her Russian, when the first McDonald’s opened.
In the spring of 1990, she went to see him with friends.
“I went there once or twice and the queue was just too long,” she said. “And, and then finally, we went there once, and it was doable. »
For Frankopan, McDonald’s was not a big deal. But her friends were enthusiastic — less about the food, as she remembered, than about the chain’s polystyrene containers. “I was surprised that the packaging was actually very coveted,” she said.
Frankopan remembers people taking the wrapper home and pinning it to their walls. They said “it’s an incredibly good insulating material,” she recalls. But “I think, actually, it was a status symbol to be able to show, not only do I have a Big Mac box, I’ve stood in line for, you know, 15 times to get my Big Mac boxes. »
She added: “I think it’s hard to overstate the symbolism of the place. »
As CNN reporter Richard Blystone said when he reported the story 32 years ago, “A western burger shop in Moscow has all the intrinsic appeal of an ice cream stand in hell. “.
McDonald’s suspends operations in Russia
After years of investing, it all came crashing down this week.
“In Russia, we employ 62,000 people who have given heart and soul to our McDonald’s brand to serve their communities. We work with hundreds of local Russian suppliers and partners who produce our menu foods and support our brand. And we serve millions of Russian customers every day who rely on McDonald’s,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a statement on Tuesday.
“In the more than thirty years that McDonald’s has operated in Russia, we have become an essential part of the 850 communities in which we operate,” he added.
But the current situation makes pursuing the market untenable, according to the executive, at least for now.
“Our values mean that we cannot ignore the unnecessary human suffering taking place in Ukraine,” Kempczinski said. Additionally, with the region in turmoil, McDonald’s can no longer reliably guarantee the supply it needs. “We are experiencing disruptions in our supply chain as well as other operational impacts,” he said.
After 32 years, “McDonald’s has decided to temporarily close all of our restaurants in Russia and suspend all operations in the market.”
McDonald’s will continue to pay its employees in Russia, the company said.
But it’s unclear when Russians will be able to visit a local McDonald’s again. “At this stage, it is impossible to predict when we will be able to reopen our restaurants in Russia,” Kempczinski said.