Icelanders evidently intend to give the McDonald’s fast food chain a heartfelt goodbye as people have been flocking to its three outlets in Reykjavík this week after it was announced on Monday that McDonald’s was closing shop in Iceland for good.
“We have all been working as hard as we can. The average sale is 4,000 hamburgers a day but for the last few days we’ve sold at least twice as much,” managing director of McDonald’s Iceland Jón Gardar Ögmundsson told Morgunbladid.
Ögmundsson said he believes that this heartfelt goodbye shows how big a share this international hamburger chain has in the national spirit.
The reason McDonald’s is closing in Iceland is the rising prices of imported goods necessary for making the hamburgers.
The operation isn’t profitable anymore and so a new fast food chain will open instead, which sells Icelandic hamburgers with Icelandic ingredients.
McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Iceland in 1993. Now the last McDonald’s hamburgers in Iceland will be served on Saturday evening.
Ögmundsson said in an earlier news story that the fast food chain is unlikely to reopen in Iceland even after the economy recovers.
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