McDonald's Opens at Seagate Canteen

By Ang Wan May

Reuters; 3rd Jun 1997

[SINGAPORE] What would you do if you were McDonald's and have run out of locations to open new outlets?

Answer: Become a canteen operator.

McDonald's has opened an outlet in disk drive maker Seagate's factory in Ang Mo Kio, the first time a fast food chain has set up in a staff canteen.

The Seagate outlet serves up burgers and fries at canteen prices to what will be 15,000 workers in the factory by the year-end.

For example, a hamburger, regular fries and a drink in Seagate costs S$2.60, the price of a plate of rice, said marketing director of McDonald's Restaurants, Fanny Lai.

"McDonald's will continue to look for strategic alliances with industrial leaders such as Seagate," said Ms Lai.

Sources say McDonald's is possibly targeting another 10 outlets in well-patronised canteens, after having expanded the number of regular outlets by 20 last year.

The owner of McDonald's franchise in Singapore, entrepreneur Robert Kwan, has aggressively expanded the number of outlets here to 94.

The latest new outlets are in HDB centres Toa Payoh Lorong 7, Telok Blangah and Teban Green.

Besides Seagate, other "non-traditional" locations in which McDonald's has opened outlets include Singapore Polytechnic and Jurong Bird Park.

Other locations where McDonald's can be found include a European luxury passenger liner, a naval base in the US, and the first "ski-thru" on the ski slopes in Sweden, which runs along the same lines as a "drive-thru".


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