(Reuters) – McDonald’s Russia aims to reopen all restaurants in two months, its new owner Alexander Govor was quoted as saying on Friday, and to expand to 1,000 locations from the 850 he took over last month.
In May, McDonald’s Corp sold the restaurants to Govor, one of its licensees in Russia, who will rebrand them under a new name, ending more than three decades of the “Golden Arches” in the country.
“We have a challenging and ambitious plan – to reopen all of the chain’s restaurants in two months,” Govor, who initially owned 25 McDonald’s restaurants in Siberia as a franchisee, said in the interview with the Forbes Russia magazine.
McDonald’s temporarily closed its restaurants in Russia in March after Russia sent troops to Ukraine.
“There are now 840 restaurants ready to be relaunched… My global plan is to increase the chain to 1,000 restaurants nationwide in the next few years,” Govor told Forbes in his first interview since the deal.
McDonald’s Russia plans to reopen its restaurant in Pushkin Square on June 12. It was its first location in Russia, opening in 1990 and becoming a symbol of American capitalism flourishing as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
Govor said the process to choose a new brand name was ongoing.
According to Russia’s anti-monopoly service, which approved the takeover, McDonald’s retains the right to buy its Russia restaurants back within 15 years.
Govor, who built his fortune in the Russian coal and oil sectors, declined to say how much he paid but said there were other bidders who wanted to take over the entire chain.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Jason Neely)
