Russia’s Terrible New Offbrand McDonald’s

Video written by Ben Doyle

[TheDaris]

My favorite new piece of info from this is knowing Russia Burger King basically went rogue. What a world we live in where part of a fast food chain just… declares independence.

[Sashadraga]

Shrimp was actually a thing in russian mcdonalds long before all of this happened. My husband used to only basically go there to eat some tasty tried shrimp

[MIIIVideo]

Russian Burger King going rogue is obviously the highlight of this video and deserves its own video

[stadion_rassolnikov]

As a russian myself, I can say that here in Russia we still call Mcdonalds a... Mcdonalds and it still tastes the very same like an original Mcdonalds did.

[MoritzvonSchweinitz]

Very small nitpick: the McFLurry was rolled out in 1998. So Russians weren't introduced to them til minimum 8 years after McDonalds started operations in Russia

[simonbone]

The first McDonald's in Russia was actually organized by McDonald's of Canada. On opening day they put out Canadian and Soviet flags, not American ones. (And McFlurry - another Canadian innovation - did not exist then.) Another sign of the Canadian restaurant: On the sign there is a little Soviet flag at the base of the M where the maple leaf is.

[PaulV.]

Great story but as an American who lives in Russia let me correct a few things:
1. Both Coca-Cola and Apple can be easily purchasable at any previous location. Coke hasnt closed any of its 10 Russian factories and sold at every supermarket as well as goes with combo meals at V&T even now. Same for almost every other Western company that "left" Russia except for Ikea and some clothing brands.
2. Fried shrimp were sold in Russian McDonalds for like 5 years already but they really added some new things on the menu in V&T that are KFC like chicken wings and strips (All KFC joints are working in Russia as before too).
3. No problem to buy fries at any Russian V&T. Cmon fries are being sold at any Russian beer pub do you think they will not get them for the new version of McDonalds? What is really happened is that Russian McDonalds has its own potato manufacturing company. Because almost all their restaurants were closed for 3 months that company has made contracts for their produce with other buyers. So when V&T reopened they simply couldnt get enough fries for their restaurants and stated that some can run out of those by evening hours but the situation will be resolved in a few weeks which is very different from "completely taking fries off menu for an indefinite period of time".
4. I ve been to V&T like 5 times already and havent had a single complaint about their food everything exactly the same as in McDonalds.
Everything else is true. Regards!

[hasnieking]

As someone who was in Russia last week, I can confirm it's the exact same thing. The Big Tasty for example, was just called the Big Special, but the sauce was exactly the same.

[wcliftongameplaystutorials]

They did a similar thing in Iceland in ~2008 where McDonald's pulled out of the country because of economic reasons so the McDonald's franchise holder in Iceland rebranded all the stores with a new menu and different prices. I believe the reason McDonald's pulled out of Iceland is because of import problems caused by a crash in the value of the Icelandic Kroner on the international market making it much more expensive to import foodstuffs...

[elvislopez]

Russian Burger King took “have it your way” a little too serious 😂

[turkaspain]

It’s literally the same full office executives team from McDonalds Russia (even the CEO) & most of the pre-war usual staff. And around 99% of food supplies were already Russian since even before the 2014.
A small number of some numerous chemical ingredients & additives had to be replaced. Also the concentrated orange juice was imported and is now disappearing as the stock of it is coming to an end.

So, not really different; mostly the same. Trust me, I’ve been visiting them for 3-4 times a week since 2015, mostly at the different stores of Moscow and another big city (with 1 mln of population).

It’s WAY better and cheaper than the local branches of KFC or Burger King, and twice or more as old and settled.

Burger king is extremely overpriced and tastes like shit.

KFC prepares all it’s chicken items by hand in-store from the raw chicken, and that results in a very widely varying sizes of chicken tenders or fillets, and slows down everything.

Unlike McDonalds and this new re-branded chain, where all of the items come factory pre-made & frozen, so everything is of high quality standards, tastes the same and looks equally sized across the whole chain of the country.

But of course there are some local premium-quality burger chains.

I’d like to point out that the McDonalds of Belarus and Kazakhstan had shared most of the menu items and even packaging with the Russian McDonalds. All those shared things were produced in Russia.

Also, AFAIK, all McDonalds stores of Belarus and Kazakhstan are owned by the same franchisee than owns around 125 ( every 1 out of 6) of Russian McDonalds stores (now re-opening under the new brand).

So the genuine McDonalds of these countries and the re-branded “Tasty, Period” chain still have some ties from what I see.

And the McDonalds Corporation has secured rights to buy out all the Russian stores back during the next 15 years at their first demand/inquiry to do so.


So, all things above considered, I’d like to believe that the reality behind this whole circus of hypocrisy is that the McDonalds Corporation still has a small backdoor insight or oversight over what’s happening in the “independent” Russian chain.

I mean, it’s in their (Corporate) best interest that the local Russian chain lives “as is” and thrives during the next 15 years, otherwise they wouldn’t wanna buy back something that’s trashed or turned into a shawarma kiosk or whatever else. Thought of course I may be wrong at it. The time will tell.

[kadiy]

As a russian I can't see alot of differences between old Mac and new one, at least in my town, and fries is still on menu, and it's still soggy...
The biggest difference is that hamburger and cheeseburger cost about 55 rub and 59 rub, it's really cheap, coz same burgers cost about 89 rub in KFC and BK. (59 rub is about 1 dollar according to russian inner currency exchange rate)

[Learn_Something_New]

The addition of shrimp is probably for a similar reason to a new lack of fries: the ease of sourcing ingredients. If they can source shrimp easily and cheaply within Russia, then it makes sense why they would add it to the menu. Also, not to say that shrimp at McDonald's isn't a bit odd, but the McDonald's menu can be very inconsistent from country to country. They've put in a lot of effort over the years to conform their menu to local cultures. The Thailand McDonald's will serve a traditional Thai rice pudding. India's McDonalds lean heavily away from beef and use more common Indian spices. It doesn't necessarily even have to be totally different menu items. Sometimes, the same menu items are just prepared differently, as I found out in an Italian airport when I tried to get a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and saw that the egg was not the scrambled (weird patty version I was used to) and was actually running out of the wrapping paper into the bag.

[__skillz]

This might be a new record for Sam uploading to the right channel

[AussieSpy]

At 3:48 you mentioned that Vkusno i Tochka added Shrimp 🍤 to the menu. Now as someone who has lived in Russia for 7 years, I can confirm that “McDonald’s” had shrimp 🍤 the whole time I have been here. They originally had Shrimp wraps then deep-fried shrimp in recent years, before Burger King.

Just thought this fact needed correction as I can tell you have never been to the original Russian McDonald’s before it was Vkusno i Tochka.

[metagear]

I tried it the other day and to be honestly it was indistinguishable from any McDonald's I've had in the past. And yes there were fries, though I've never considered McDonalds fries to be good in any country I've visited.

[lalankos]

I live in Moscow and can confirm that a lot of items are missing from the menu, but we always had and still have shrimps. My favourite french fries really do cost A LOT. You can get a decent mccombo for the price of two big sized french fries. Prices went up around 20% on everything else. My favourite part is that they really did paint McDonald's logo black on the sauces, but you still can see it, and all the other items including cups don't have any branding at all

[MrEstarion]

A minor correction: shrimp has been a hit in Russian McDonalds for years

Also, something that didn't make sense to clarify pacing-wise: Burger King didn't go rogue in legal terms. The American company owns only 49% of the Russian subsidiary, so they had no say in whether BK Russia stays open or closes.

A much more fun example would be OBI, where the genuinely rogue Russian management decided to reopen and had their PoS billing locked by the parent company within two hours. The Russian subsidiary did end up buying itself out a couple of months later.

[fitz]

Four weeks later, Gorbachev has died.

[mynil]

If somebody is interested: I am Russian, and I can say that nothing changed, except for the logo. If the problems described in this video do even happen, nobody I know had ever noticed them