Burger Diplomacy: Part III

McDonald’s has become one the targets of anti-globalization. But the reality is that McDonald’s or any other restaurant can’t undermine a culture or a history.

Three of the world’s most dominant cultures and nations-France, Germany, and Japan-have not lost their cultural sovereignty since McDonald’s arrived. I’d argue that rather than weaken them; they have grown stronger in their nationalism.

Look at France the worldwide headquarters of anti-Americanism. They have 780 McDonald’s and no matter how many dairy farmers destroy a store-there are 1,000 more who want ‘Le Big Mac’. For the most part people vote with their feet and so far McDonald’ remains popular to the average French citizen.

McDonald’s reputation and brand are so valuable that expansion into international markets has been done carefully. “Great attention is paid to local customs and to making connections with the right local partners,” wrote George Cohen the man who brought McDonald’s to the USSR in 1990 in his 1997 autobiography To Russia With Fries.

This is a man who was born in the United States and moved to Canada when he bought into the McDonald’s world by securing the rights to the company in Eastern Canada. He would become a Canadian citizen on the logic that it made no sense to work and prosper in a nation without having the rights to vote in that nation.

Cohen described a ’Burger Diplomacy’ that begins to take shape in the 1970’s. He met with Russian delegates at the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal, Canada took them to McDonald’s for a snack and asked them if they would like McDonald’s in the Soviet Union-they did. It would take another 14 years for that to become a reality.

A prime place for McDonald’s to establish itself should have been South Africa. But it was Cohen who made sure that McDonald’s wouldn’t open until Apartheid was ended. And sure enough in 1995 after Nelson Mandela was released from prison and Apartheid was ended McDonald’s opened up 17 restaurants.

Burger Diplomacy was thus born. It shows that nothing in Russia will be the same since McDonald’s arrived and it will be difficult to return to any pre-Perestroika model.

During the August 1991 coup when Cohen describes Moscow as a, “state of upheaval” the Moscow McDonald’s crew went outside to protect the store. Miraculously they found that there was no threat as the Russian people said, “Makdonalds- u nikh zhe Rossiyskaya firma. S nimi vsyo v poryadko.” (“McDonald’s? They’re a Russian company. They’re okay.”)

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