Travel Notes

Care for some fries with that reform?

McDonald’s celebrates 10th anniversary in Russia

T

en years ago, the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in Moscow, on Pushkin Square, taking over the space of the legendary Café Lira. It was a sign of the changing times.

Younger, middle-aged Russians have nostalgic memories of Café Lira—it was a somewhat bohemian venue where, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one could drink alcoholic beverages with that fashionable, foreign name: “cocktail.” But the café was not exactly open to all. The all-mighty shveytsar (doorman), hero of the popular song “Cafe Lira,” by the rock group Time Machine (see page 6), tended to bar access to rank-and-file visitors. In those deficit-ruled years, he would open the door only “in search of the long ruble,” as Time Machine’s lyrics had it. 

The closure of Lira and the subsequent opening of Mc-Donald’s in early 1990 was like a thunderstorm over the Russian capital. Musco-vites flocked there by the thousands, with lines snak-ing around huge Pushkin Square in all types of  weather (the restaurant took only rubles, not dollars like many other Western-owned res-tau-rants at the time). For nearly a year after the restaurant first opened, a 2 hour wait for entrance was not uncommon. What is more, this, the largest McDonald’s in the world (quite appropriate for Soviet-era Mos-cow), was as en vogue as the Café Lira. Young couples went there on dates, dressed and coifed in high style. But notably, there was no shveytsar. 

More restaurants followed. First on the Arbat, then at the bottom of Tverskaya, then Prospekt Mira. Then on to St. Petersburg ... Today, Russia counts 52 McDonald’s restaurants (and 80 million served), 27 of which are in Moscow. But the first restaurant at Pushkin Square is still the biggest (with 27 cash registers and seating 700). 

McDonald’s move into Moscow and Russia was the brainchild of George Cohon, a native Chicagoan whose grandparents fled pogroms in Ukraine a century ago. Cohon, who is now senior chairman of McDonald’s Canada, got the idea for a Moscow McDonald’s in 1976, and doggedly pursued the venture for 14 years. As Cohon wrote in the introduction to his recently published memoir, To Russia with Fries (McLelland & Stewart, 1999): “Where do you start when you decide to introduce one of the most potent symbols of Western capitalism into a system dedicated to the very opposite? No one knew. There was no order to do something like that. There were no rules. But just the fact that no one knew how didn’t seem to me a good reason not to do it. So we invented our own rules.”

As in the rest of the world, Russia’s McDonald’s have become a place for thousands of Russian teenagers to earn pocket money, to learn the business and service skills so alien to the Russia of Café Lira days, but so vital for contemporary survival. This, in fact, may be Cohon’s most valuable legacy.

Today, ten years on, the Golden Arches have become part of the historical landscape of Pushkin Square. The lines are gone and Russians no longer dress up to eat there; it is no longer an extraordinary event. Which says much about what has happened here this last decade. McDonald’s has become what it should be: a clean comfortable place, loved by children, where you can grab a quick meal that is predictable, tasty enough and worth what you pay. 

How is that for a sign of the times?

— Mikhail Ivanov

ENGLISH OR ELSE!

Russian federal authorities have introduced a Unified Rules of Customer Service that applies to all Russian stores. Under the new regulation, all store personnel are required to speak a foreign language within a so-called “speaking minimum.” 

HELP AT SHERemetevo

Moscow Marriott Hotels has opened a sales office on the arrivals level at Sheremetevo airport. The office will allow travelers to make reservations directly at the airport as well as solve luggage and customs problems, deal with transfers and arrange greetings at the airport. The three Moscow Marriott Hotels are owned by Mospromstroi and managed by Interstate Hotels Corporation under a franchise agreement with Marriott Hotels, Resorts & Suites. 

cleaned & pressed

Passengers on the Russian rails will soon enjoy access to a shower and clean toilets. According to the Russian Railway Ministry, the new, improved wagon-hotels will have 28 seats instead of 36 and feature two bio-toilets and a shower cabin. The wagons will also boast a special “ironing room,” for passengers who may be a bit “pressed” for time and want to smooth out wrinkles on their clothes en route.

1 in 4,000,000

Yelena Zhdankina, a fifth year student at the Law Faculty of Moscow State University, became the four-millionth passenger on Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines. Aeroflot General Director Valery Okulov congratulated Zhdankina and awarded her with the certificate “Honorary Passenger.”