Investvine-2 Dec 2017
US fast food chain McDonald’s, the epitome of capitalism, on December 2 finally opened its first store in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi, one of the last heartlands of communism.
The two systems seemed to get along with each other, since hungry customers lined up for Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets at the store on Hang Bai Street overlooking the idyllic Hoan Kiem Lake, a busy tourism destination in the city and also well-frequented by locals.
The restaurant is the first outside of Vietnam’s southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City, where 16 branches have opened since McDonald’s first came to Vietnam in 2014 to much fanfare, welcomed especially by the rapidly-growing middle class and younger people with growing spending power.
Despite being a country known for delicious street food such as pho noodle soup and banh mi sandwiches, the fast food industry in Vietnam has seen double-digit growth annually for the past five years, and the country has the highest 2017 growth in Asia-Pacific for fast food chains, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. This has already lured brands like Starbucks, KFC and Burger King into the country.
KFC entered the Vietnamese market in 1997. The US fast food chain now has 140 restaurants in Vietnam, including 35 in Hanoi. Burger King, which came to Vietnam just two years before McDonald’s, has 15 restaurants, including seven in Hanoi. The chain, however, faced difficulties since many Vietnamese were unfamiliar with its food, which resulted in closures of a number of Burger King restaurants in large cities.
