According to a report on Arabian Business, sister publication to Hotelier Middle East, McDonald's daily sales targets for the Middle East and Africa are currently ringing up at an average of $6m a day throughout 2015. Or rather, $6,027,397 — to be precise.
There’s no denying the numbers are super-sized, but according to McDonald's Middle East vice president of development Yousif Abdulghani, there's more to come, with ambitious plans to increase this target by 60% percent over the next five years.
McDonald’s operates more than 1,200 restaurants in 16 countries across the Middle East and Africa, serves nearly 2 million customers a day, and employs 46,000 people. Sales are expected to amount to $2.2bn this year. As the man overseeing this colossal operation, one might assume that Abdulghani — the vice president and international relationship partner of McDonald’s Middle East — would be satisfied with the performance so far. Not a bit of it.
“We aspire to double the number of employees we have to 100,000 by 2020,” he says. “That will come with organic growth as well as our expansion in opening more restaurants. By 2020, we plan to reach 1,700 restaurants.
“In terms of revenue, our vision is to reach $3.5bn by 2020. These are very ambitious targets, but we feel confident in our ability to achieve those numbers in partnership with our master franchisees.”
Those master franchisees — partnerships with largely family-run firms in different countries — are the backbone of McDonald’s operations in the region. Half of the brand’s revenue comes from the Gulf, where nearly 500 restaurants are expected to become 750 in five years’ time. After the GCC, the next biggest markets are Egypt, Turkey and South Africa.
“Saudi Arabia remains our biggest market in the Gulf and we see high potential in our growth there,” Abdulghani says. “The UAE is another market which has been very strong and solid from inception. Kuwait, to a certain extent, due its geographic limitation and a high penetration of restaurants in a small geography.
Congratulation!