When a McDonald’s restaurant closes down, there are signs that need to be taken down and disposed of; but McDonald’s apparently has strict rules about sign ownership. “I do not have the authorisation to give the signs away,” says Jon Gardar Ogmundsson, soon to an ex-McDonalds Restaurant owner in Iceland.
The same is true for the hundreds of packs of McDonald’s burger meat that are likely to be left over when the restaurants officially close at midnight tonight. The burgers come in marked boxes which nobody is allowed buy except licensed McDonald’s restaurants.
People will need to make do with the last remaining hamburgers and children’s toys as their memorabilia. IceNews sources reveal that some people are even stocking up on McDonalds’s cheeseburgers and nuggets only to freeze them at home for later use.
According to Frettabladid it is estimated that over 10,000 McDonald’s burgers have been sold each day this week with a new record likely to be set today.
In a spectacular show of efficiency, the new Metro restaurants are due to open up in the old McDonald’s locations tomorrow and Morgunbladid editor and ex-PM and central bank manager David Oddsson has been offered the first Metro burger for free.
Oddsson was the first ever McDonald’s customer in Iceland while he was Prime Minister in 1993.
Metro begins with an M…
David ??for gods sake,its a hambuger joint!!.ICELAND get over yourself!!!
Live is geting more dificult.What is next?
I hope that David remembers to pay the tax on that free gift.
this is the best thing to happen to iceland …lead the world towards healthy eating…invent something better..:)
“David ??for gods sake,its a hambuger joint!!.ICELAND get over yourself!!!”
ROFLAO!!!
” IceNews sources reveal that some people are even stocking up on McDonalds’s cheeseburgers and nuggets only to freeze them at home for later use.”
“A diet of burgers, chips, sausages and cake will programme your brain into craving even more foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat, according to new research.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6451119/Junk-food-as-addictive-as-drugs.html
The image in the article fits also in here, LOL!!
Great news for Iceland!
Hopefully the new business will use all Icelandic produce! If we have to eat Junk food let it be Icelandic junk! Who knows, maybe we will even get real meat in our burgers now.
Yes, lets try to convince ourselves that this is GREAT NEWS!!!
its so good to have such great news,after all the bad….and that david dosent have to pay !!!! i will sleep better at night,knowing that..
when the first big M opened,i went with David,but i had to pay ??? how fare is that ???.anyway if it makes people happy,thats fine….
“lead the world towards healthy eating”
By exchanging one hamburger restaurant for another? Hahaha!
McDonalds is not just another hamburger restaurant, the most healthy part of a McDonald is the wrapping,
remebmer Supersize me
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6652157005731554560#
>remebmer Supersize me
Do you honestly think that consistently eating that quantity of BigMets would lead to a different result?
Axel, you miss the point, it wouldn’t have been any better for Morgan Spurlock’s health if he had eaten every day at Metro instead of McDonalds! It’s just the general problem of fast food: Using that fatty, unbalanced stuff as the sole source of food every day is a bad idea, period. However, McDonalds is still better than the greasy average hamburger joint, where the owners don’t care about nutrition, quality, sustainability and often even hygiene at all!
Remember, “fresh” food can be more problematic than frozen stuff because it’s more perishable, especially the minced meat. Cases of food poisoning from fast food bought from insanitary sources aren’t unusual at all. McD, on the other hand, has a lot of safeguards in place for this not to happen, so it’s actually more trustworthy than the small businesses.
All in all, there’s nothing wrong with having a Big Mac every once in a while, if you compensate for this by eating healthy stuff in general. And those who try to put the big M in a bad light all engage in the hypocrissy of not applying the same scrutiny to the other competitors. Yeah, of course, preparing organic, locally produced food at home is better, but that’s really comparing US apples to Icelandic oranges (grown in green houses, of course).
To all the McDonalds haterz: At least people know what they get when they order a BigMac, because of the standardized ingredients. It’s 540 calories and 29 g of fat (and you really shouldn’t have that every day):
http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutritionfacts.pdf
Now, pls show me the nutrition data for a Metro Burger, or for a hamburger servered at your favorite place! You can’t? Hmm, so what is the alleged “fact” that other burgers are more healthy based on?
In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?
“In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?”
Probably more hygenic than burying your food in a pool of urine for weeks as the locals do.
>In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?
Assuming that this is correct, who do you think is staffing the Metros (or other indy burger joints)?
And at least with McDs there are established proceedures to follow.
“Balkanson said:
In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?”
Balkanson, your comment indicates a high level of bigotry against foreigners. I though most foreigners already left Iceland. The level of hygiene in a McDonald’s restaurant will depend mostly on the owners of the franchise, the local health authority and how good a job McDonald’s does in enforcing their standards.
Apprently offer was that * anyone * named Davíð would get a free burger on Metro’s first day of opening ( Sunday Nov 1st ).
As well as fresher ingredients, there will be more focus on healthy salads and such, as well as equivalent to previous menus (including Barna boxes with toys, ie like old happy meals).
Also 5% less in cost next to the McDonalds branded items.
Read here :
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/10/26/mcdonald’-close-their-restaurants-in-iceland/#comment-99017
( There also is discussion there about real shock story of 2009 — McDonalds Corporation leaving the UK. )
In nutshell, reason that Jón Gardar Ögmundsson owner of MCDonalds francises here is stopping his francices is lack of confidence that exchange controls would be lifted any time soon.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=amu4.WTVaqjI
“We would have to raise our prices by 20 percent to get the margin needed on our products,” Magnus Ogmundsson, Lyst chief executive officer, said in a phone interview. “That would have sent a Big Mac to 780 kronur” ($6.36), compared with the 650 kronur it costs today, he said. ”
Maybe if stupid Red-Green government had moved more swiftly in the reconstruction of banks ( adviser was close to resigning remember ) and getting rid of the exchange control in April this year instead of making more strict like diots.. import cost from Germany would be slowly getting better so francisee might decide to continue instead of this what happened.
But this is not end of something as much as beginning of a new Nordic brand :
http://img.visir.is/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=XZ&Date=20091026&Category=FRETTIR01&ArtNo=326438990&Ref=AR&MaxW=260&MaxH=260&NoBorder=1
A long time ago I had to do my army service. The advantage of this rather useless year was the fact that I got to know all kinds of people that you normally would never meet.
One of them was a drug-addict who told me the following story:
he had been working in a McD in a town in the south of the Netherlands.
It was is job to fry fries and burgers, put them in the wrappings and deposit them in the place from where it would be sold to the hungry customer.
There were a lot of flies in this kitchen and they had a ribbon with special glue to which these nasty insects would get stuck. Now in stead of just killing these flies and throw them away, they collected the very big ones and put them between a BigM.
Tese Bigm’s were wrapped and put ready for sale.
This guy and his colleagues knew which one was the ‘flyburger’ or ‘Macfly’ . and they watched from the kitchen with great enthusiasm and made bets which customer would get it!
So far about hygiene in the McD.
I stopped eating there after hearing this story.
And Gray, this is not just something dutch. I read a book by Günther Wallraf (“Ganz unten”) in which he describes his experiences in a german MacD. They were not much better.
Niels, don’t tell me anything about working conditions at McD. I once worked there for three days, and quit because I thought it’s subhuman. However, nothing so far has convinced me that other places are any better. And while I enjoy fast food every now and then, I never had any problems with McD stuff (frozen patties on a hot grill aren’t a good environment for bacteria) but several times with takeaway from small turkish and greek restaurants!
Still remember a news story about middle east workers in a west european fast food chain, ejaculating in the mayo souse.
“Do you honestly think that consistently eating that quantity of BigMets would lead to a different result?”
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3081/2880286976_0e1ba296d3.jpg
Icelandic burgers being collected in the mountains,
some of the mountains are amost vertical, specially in the Westman islands, the farmers there say only the stupid ones fall :)
Balkanson said:
“In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?”
You dont need much of a education to flip burgers, i know lots of foreign born people here in Iceland and i dont see them as foreigners, there is no immigration problem here in Iceland, the country and culture is still the same as before.
“Probably more hygenic than burying your food in a pool of urine for weeks as the locals do.”
Hehe, this is a lie often told to foreigners about the way shark meat is prepared, usually after they eat a bite of it,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzy5P5uyVbQ&feature=fvsr
Give it to the ‘Islandic Love Corporation–then to the museum
Niels wrote :
>This guy and his colleagues knew which one was the ‘flyburger’ or ‘Macfly’
>. and they watched from the kitchen with great enthusiasm and made bets
>which customer would get it!
You do have the colourfull stories Niels. I though that therre was no topping you story on the fake ( pis**d on ) marijuana ciagaretes sold to the Swedish.
( Would link to it but can’t find it thanks to search feature here on IceNews not allowing search by posters .)
There are many such stories about fast food venues but as Snopes show, in most cases they are the urban legend :
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/mcdshake.asp?print=y McDonalds beverages contain yucky non-food substances
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/coweyes.asp McDonalds is the largest purchaser of Cow Eyeballs
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/wormburg.asp McDonald’s hamburgers contain worm meat
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/tumor.asp Not mayonaisse in that chicken sandwitch
etc..
None is true from the fast food industry. But beware of you co-workers :
“Vengeful co-worker make it his practice to urinate into office coffee pot..”
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/piss.asp
And of course Dutch teenagers offering you majiuana cigarette abroad. :)
Fisy,
this site www.snopes.com is really fun. I knew about the story of semen in the garlic sauce of a pitta shop (I think the story even originates from my home town of Utrecht and I already eard it in secondary school) but apparently it is a hoax too.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/semen.asp
Do any one knows teh webadress to metro burgers?
YES THE WEB IS WWW.KEEPBEINGFAT.IS
“Balkanson said:
In McDonald’s work mostly uneducated foreigners. What is the level of hygiene in such places?”
YOU ARE RIGHT BALKANSON, MOST OF THE PEOPLE WORKING AT FAST FOOD PLACES, OR AT ANY RESTAURANT IN ICELAND, ARE PEOPLE WITH LOW EDUCATIONAL LEVELS. THE DIFERENCE IS THAT IN EU COUNTRIES PEOPLE TOUCHING OR SERVING FOOD ( AT LEAST IN THE COUNTRIES I KNOW) HAVE A SPECIAL TRAINING OF SOME DAYS AND OBTAIN A CERTIFICATE. BUT IN ICELAND YOU SEE PUNCHES OF TEENAGERS WORKING AT DOMINOS, HAMBURGER PLACES ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY, AND THEY HAVE NOT EVEN BEEN TOLD ANYTHING ABOUT FOOD HYGENE. SO JUST GUESS WHAT KIND OF FOOD YOU ARE GETTING WHEN MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN ICELAND DON´T WASH THEIR HANDS AT WORK.
I HAVE TO TELL THAT I HAVE NEVER SEEN IN ANY COUNTRY WHAT I HAVE SEEN HERE IN ICELAND. IF YOU GOOD TO A GOOD RESTAURANT IT MIGHT BE OK. BUT THE REST, SPECIALLY THOSE NO-BRAND HAMBURGER PLACES,, JESUS… YOU SEE ALL THIS HAMBURGER PLACES WHERE THE SAME GUY SELLS YOU GAS-OIL, CLEANS YOUR CAR, AND MAKES YOU A HOT DOG… AND YEAH, MORE OF THEM WHITE ICELANDERS… IF RACE OR CULTURAL ORIGIN MAKES A DIFFERENCE. YOU SEE MUSLIMS? AT LEAST THEY WASH THEIR HANDS AND FACES 5 TIMES A DAY FOR EACH PRAY THEY MAKE…
I WENT TO A PLACE TO PICK UP MY PIZZA AND I SAW THAT VERY FAT ICELAND MAN MAKING THE PIZZAS, CLEANING HIS HANDS WITH THE BACK PART OF HIS TROUSERS ( LETS SAY, HIS VERY AS*) AND EATING PIECES OF CHEESE AND HAM IN HE MEANWHILE…
IN ICELAND YOUNG PEOPLE GET A JOB, AND THEY START WORKING AND THEY HAVEN´T GONE TO A COURSE FOR BEING ABLE TO WORK WITH FOOD. THEY JUST GO LIKE THIS.
I THINK BALKANSON YOU SHOULD WASH YOUR HANDS MORE OFTEN, AND YOUR MOUTH AS WELL
rozen patties on a hot grill aren’t a good environment for bacteria) but several times with takeaway from small turkish and greek restaurants!
STEREOTYPES AND PREJUDICES? LINKING FOOD HYGENE AND NATIONAL ORIGIN MIGHT NOT BE SOMETHING THAT REALLY WORKS. WE THINK THAT WE MIGHT FIND DIRTIER PLACE TO EAT OUT OF EU, USA,,,, BUT THE REALITY IS VERY DIFFERENT…
“STEREOTYPES AND PREJUDICES? LINKING FOOD HYGENE AND NATIONAL ORIGIN MIGHT NOT BE SOMETHING THAT REALLY WORKS. WE THINK THAT WE MIGHT FIND DIRTIER PLACE TO EAT OUT OF EU, USA,,,, BUT THE REALITY IS VERY DIFFERENT…”
I agree