MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) — A surprising 49 percent of those surveyed support the idea of closing down the fast food restaurants chain outlets in Russia (compared to 47 percent in April this year), while 33 percent are against it.
The opponents of McDonald’s are mostly people that never visited the chain’s outlets. They argue thatAccording to 41 percent of respondents, McDonald’s restaurants are serving unhealthy and unsavory food (41 percent of respondents said so). Another 20 percent of respondents believe that McDonald’s restaurants should be closed in order to support the domestic chainsproducer, while 12 percent of respondents claim that it should be done as retaliation against the US sanctions.
45 Forty-five percent of respondents said that they’ve visited McDonald’s outlets at least once, while 54 percent said that they’ve never visited it.
The survey was conducted on October 18 and 19; 1,600 people from 43 regions of Russia participated in it. The margin of error doesn’t exceed 3.,4 percent.
On August 20 Russian food safety agency Rospotrebnadzor launched a campaign of sanitary checks in McDonald’s restaurants, which resulted in 12 outlets being temporarily closed. According to Business Insider, the company has stated that more than 200 of McDonald’s 440 restaurants in Russia are now under government investigation, and market-research group Euromonitor has estimated that McDonald’s sales totalled $2.2 billion last year, or about 8 percent of its worldwide sales of $28 billion.
