McDonald's CEO Discusses China Strategy

From McDonald's (MCD) Q4 2006 earnings conference call earlier today:

James A. Skinner - Vice Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer

In China, our key growth market, our focus is simple: cementing brand preference for Chinese consumers through key competitive advantages. For instance, we have the most menu choice among our competitive set, so we’re establishing and promoting our core menu with a focus on beef, chicken, and fish.

The drive-thru is absolutely critical to our long-term development plan in China as well, so 50 of our new restaurants will have drive-thrus, ten of which will be a result of our recent alliance with Sinopec, China’s largest petroleum retailer. In fact, we opened our first Sinopec drive-thru restaurant just last week in Beijing.

We’ll also market breakfast nationally for the first time ever.

.....Now, there are two other markets, China and Russia, that when franchising laws and infrastructure allow us to franchise, we will someday. So five years from now, China and Russia could be on that list but they’re not today because franchising laws in the environment just aren’t where they need to be.

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