McDonald’s flagship store in Hong Kong is close to claiming the crown as the busiest in the fast-food chain’s global network of more than 40,000 outlets, a capstone in a half-century of operating in the city.
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The 9,000 sq ft (836 square metre) Admiralty Centre store, which reopened for business last month after a three-week renovation, serves more than 1,000 customers an hour during peak periods, putting it on a trajectory to surpass the chain’s outlet in the concourse of London’s Liverpool Street tube station as the busiest McDonald’s store on the planet, said the company’s international developmental lead, Hisham Sidky.
“We are competing to get to first place, beating the Liverpool [Street] outlet,” Hisham said during an interview on a recent evening at the bustling outlet, surrounded by diners. “[The Admiralty Centre outlet] is going to make it very soon. If not this month, it will be next month.”
Hong Kong, which displayed its first golden arches logo along Paterson Street in Causeway Bay in January 1975, now claims four of McDonald’s five busiest stores worldwide. The chain will add five to six more outlets this year to its 260 shops in Hong Kong, which would translate to about 3.5 outlets for every 100,000 residents, making the city one of McDonald’s most important in Asia in terms of density, said Randy Lai, CEO of McDonald’s Hong Kong.
The Admiralty Centre outlet, located outside one of the city’s busiest subway stations in the business district, has served more than 24 million customers over the past decade, handing out more than 7.5 million Chicken McNuggets, 4 million servings of French fries and 2.3 million cups of coffee, including those sold by the attached McCafe outlet.
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McDonald’s success in Hong Kong is due in no small part to the design of its stores, which is “part of the total solution” of meeting demand, Lai said.