McDonald's Corp plans to open 450 new restaurants on the mainland by the end of 2010 and will begin to push its worldwide franchising model into the mainland market within four years, according to executives at the world's top fast-food chain.
McDonald's would open 125 restaurants this year, 150 next year and 175 in 2010, said Tim Fenton, who heads the company's operations in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
'The biggest thing we have going for us is our volume growth. The China team has had double-digit same-store sales growth year to date on top of same-store double-digit sales growth last year,' Mr Fenton said on the sidelines of an Olympic sponsorship event in Beijing.
Same-store sales grew 9.1 per cent in the first half of the year, helping to push up profit margins. The mainland's informal eating market was worth almost US$200 billion and was growing 16 per cent per year, Mr Fenton said.
McDonald's, which owns 950 of its 953 mainland outlets, also plans to expand its franchising business within two to four years. About half of the chain's 8,000 restaurants in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa are franchised, compared with 70 per cent worldwide.
'We've always made money in China but not to the level we wanted to franchise,' Mr Fenton said. 'Going forward, we do expect to have a franchising model and system not unlike some of the other bigger countries in the world.'