Hold the Borscht, Babushka--Big Macs Are Coming to Moscow

Soviets will get a chance to munch “Bolshoi Macs” when the first of about 20 McDonald’s restaurants in Moscow opens next year, officials from the city and the giant hamburger chain announced Friday.

“I think that the McDonald’s in Moscow will be the highest volume McDonald’s in the world,” said George A. Cohon, president of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of McDonald’s Corp. of Oak Brook, Ill.

Cohon and Vladimir I. Malishkov, chief of the food service administration of the Moscow City Council, signed a joint venture agreement Friday at Moscow’s city hall at a ceremony attended by reporters.

McDonald’s Gets 49%

The agreement, which gives McDonald’s of Canada a 49% share in the Soviet-controlled firm, is the latest Soviet joint business venture with a foreign company.

“McDonald’s is bringing more than just restaurants to the Soviet Union,” Cohon said, adding that the McDonald’s system would introduce into the country a new concept of service and efficiency.

Cohon said negotiations to bring the Big Mac to Moscow started 12 years ago during the 1976 Montreal Olympics but only recent changes in Soviet law easing foreign investment made conclusion of the deal possible.

To Open on Gorky Street

The first McDonald’s is slated to open on Gorky Street near the Kremlin sometime in the second half of 1989. Eventually, up to 20 will be built, but no deadline has been set for their construction.

Virtually all the ingredients will be locally grown. McDonald’s experts have been working with Soviet agricultural experts for the past year growing potatoes to meet McDonald’s standards.

“A Big Mac in Moscow will taste the same as a Big Mac in New York or London or Rio,” Cohon said.

The initial price will be about two rubles ($3.40) for a Big Mac or about 1% of the average monthly Soviet wage.