Mcdonald’s Indian Entry with a Bang

McDonald’s Indian Entry with a Bang!

When McDonald’s entered the Indian market in 1996, the company faced a number of unique challenges. What’s interesting is to see how they made their entry impactful?

There were significant cultural differences to consider, as a large population in India follow vegetarian diet and would not eat Beef at all. They did not launch beef burgers for which they are recognized worldwide.

With the Introduction of Aloo ‘Tikki Aloo Burger for INR 20’, they killed not ‘one’ or ‘two’ but ‘many birds’ with one short and in many ways were ‘Marketing Masterstrokes’.

Following were the strategies :

✅ ‘Known to Unknown’ — While burgers were Alien or, Unknown to Indian Customers but ‘Aloo Tikki’ was a common/known name with hint of Indian Spices. In addition to offering ‘Aloo Tikki Burger’, McDonald’s adapted its menu to suit local tastes and preferences. For example, the company introduced a range of spicy sauces and condiments, as well as local favorites such as masala fries.

✅ ‘Opening Price Point’ — Burger at Rs.20 meant they spoke about ‘affordability’. Which we call as ‘Opening Price Point’ or ‘OPP’ strategy to break the ‘cost barrier’ in customers mind saying we are not expensive. Although they had many products in the menu at higher Price Point. A soft serve promoted as Ice Cream at Rs.7 was also a part of the same ‘OPP strategy’.

✅ ‘Promoting Vegetarian Product’ — Promotion of ‘Aloo Tikki Burger’ and Mcveggie Burger meant they were talking about ‘Vegetarian Products’. They did not stop only with the promotion of vegetarian burgers but created a system of seperate cooking veg and non veg within their restaurants. With this #mcdonalds also became the pioneers of separate Veg & Non Cooking in the #india. This attracted a lot of vegetarian customers inside their restautants.

✅ ‘Something for All’ — To appeal to a wider audience, McDonald’s made an effort to cater to families and children, offering playgrounds and play areas in its restaurants and promoting its Happy Meals. This broke the culture barrier and invited families to come into their restaurants.

Overall, McDonald’s success in the Indian market can be attributed to its ability to adapt to local tastes and preferences, as well as its focus on offering a range of menu options and creating a family-friendly atmosphere in its restaurants.

✅ Menu — Small & Food — Hot

Other than adapting Indian flavours to their Offering, McDonald’s kept the #menu Small, which helped in making the food production process fast, visit of the Customers ‘quick’.
Habitually Indians loved eating snacks like Samosa, Pakoras, Vada Pao, Rolls.Hot Burgers nicely packed in paper packaging, French Fries with an option of Masala Fries quickly became their favorite.

The importance of ‘Speed of service’ lesson can be drawn from here.

✅ ‘Softy’ as an Option for Sweets

India’s have a sweet tooth in their DNA and their love for ‘Sweets’ is well known. The ‘soft serve’/softy served as an alternate to sweets/Ice Cream at Rs.7 became a big hit. School/Collage kids and youngsters used to queue in front of the McDonald’s Restaurant to pick up their affordable ‘Ice Cream’.
This served McDonald’s ‘OPP’ strategy well.

✅ Processes were created on KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid!)

The Entire Operations Procedure were kept simple to follow and repeat. Easy to understand and well-defined SOP for the entire Restaurant Operations helped the Team Members in enjoying their work.
McDonald’s has one of the Best Training Modules till date.

✅ Hiring Young team & Training them for Growth

Hiring young Team Members helped them in bringing the much-needed energy at the stores, which was required specially for the reason as they targeted young.

Other than safe Food Handling methods and #haccp , the team was also trained on Inventory Controls, Cost Efficiency & Leadership.
The Managers and Supervisors were all grown from the Team Member level. This policy helped them in retaining lot of young talent, brought ownership and became a carrier for a lot of youngesters.

✅ Shiny Toilets, Sparkling Stores

The Team at McDonald’s were trained for maintaining very high level of cleanliness and hygiene at the store level. In fact, they can be given the credit of uplifting the cleanliness standards of the Indian Food Service Industry to follow.

They were the pioneers of encouraging customers for a ‘Kitchen Tour’ to show their level of standards they maintained.

✅ Kids Centric Approach

A set of small yet effective strategies like Toys with their Happy Meal, distributing balloons, a separate ‘B’day party area’ were instant hit among families.
During their Launch days, they used to get School Kids for School Excursion, where the kids were given a round of the store and taste of the Food.

Keeping a Baby Chair in the stores was attention to detail.

✅ Store Interiors & Music

The Interiors were carefully kept bright and colorful to attract kids and teens to the stores. They also used to happily play Local Radio in their Stores to give a sense of localization.

The Strategies adopted by McDonald’s in India is so detailed that it should be taught in Indian B-Schools.

Following the principles you can create your brand too or implement some the strategies to your existing brands to make them better.

Would like to talk?

swarn@opstrah.com, www.opstrahdesign.com