WATCH – ‘Tasty and that’s it’: Rebranded McDonald’s opens in Moscow
A new era for fast food in Russia has dawned with the opening of rebranded McDonald’s under the name Vkusno & Tochka, which translates to ‘tasty and that’s it’.
While the golden arches and big macs may have gone, the rebranded restaurant chain opened up its doors once again, more than three decades after McDonald’s first landed in the country.
This comes after McDonald’s announced it was selling up all of its restaurants in Russia over the war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin used the patriotic ‘Russia Day’ to re-launch the chain.
Queues were not as big as they were in the early 90s when the original McDonald’s entered the Soviet Union, but the new logo – a burger with two fries and a slogan ‘the name changes, love stays’, still probed to be popular.
Scores of people queued outside the new chain in central Moscow’s Pushkin Square, with IT worker Sardana Donskaya telling Reuters he had queued up for 32 hours to get the first taste of the new outlet.
Vkusno & tochka’s menu was smaller and did not offer the Big Mac, but did include offerings such as a double cheeseburger, going for 129 roubles ($2.31) compared with roughly 160 under McDonald’s, and a fish burger for 169 roubles, compared with about 190 previously, according to Reuters.
The new quality manager at the company said the burgers were the same as before, and the equipment used to make them had also stayed, but the name and price had changed.