Olympic-sized McDonald's outlet in London
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LONDON - In a case of taking fast food to the extreme, McDonald's has embraced the pop-up restaurant trend for the 2012 Olympics by building a fast food restaurant of world record breaking size in Stratford, east London, that will last for six weeks.
About 300 metres from the Olympic Stadium, it will displace Pushkin Square in Moscow as the world's busiest and is expected to serve an estimated 50,000 Big Mac burgers and 180,000 portions of fries - feeding 1,200 customers an hour at its busiest - from the beginning of the Olympics to the closing of the Paralympics.Once the Games are concluded, the two-storey chalet-style building in the Olympic Park will be dismantled and 75 per cent of it re-used or recycled.
From tables and highchairs through kitchen equipment and electric light bulbs, to timber and air-conditioning units, about 5,500 components have been earmarked for reuse in 1,200 existing and new McDonald's restaurants in the United Kingdom.
Even the toilets in the 3,000 square metre restaurant are papered with tile-effect vinyl wallpaper to avoid the wastage of about 30 tonnes of broken tiles after the restaurant closes.
The building went up in six weeks and will take four weeks to dismantle.
McDonald's UK Chief Executive Officer Jill McDonald said the move was "a world first" for the chain, meeting targets specified by the London Organising Committee.