G. In his previous job Mr Hennequin established a “design studio” in France to spruce up his company’s drab restaurants and adapt the interior to local tastes. The studio is now masterminding improvements everywhere in Europe. He also set up a “food studio”, where cooks devise new recipes in response to local trends.</p> H. Given France’s reputation as the most anti-American country in Europe, it seems odd that McDonald’s revival in Europe is being led by a Frenchman, using ideas cooked up in the French market. But France is in fact the company’s most profitable market after America. The market where McDonald’s is weakest in Europe is not France, but Britain.
! x$ K, d1 A- d I. “Fixing Britain should be his priority,” says David Palmer, a restaurant analyst at UBS. Almost two-thirds of the 1,214 McDonald’s restaurants in Britain are company-owned, compared with 40% in Europe and 15% in America. The company suffers from the volatility of sales at its own restaurants, but can rely on steady income from franchisees. So it should sell as many underperforming outlets as possible, says Mr Palmer.
, U1 I) n9 I3 Z' L9 t4 q* k+ p/ h% a J. M.Mark Wiltamuth, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that European company-owned restaurants’ margins will increase slightly to 16.4% in 2007. This is still less than in the late 1990s and below America’s 18-19% today. But it is much better than before Mr Hennequin’s reign. He is already being tipped as the first European candidate for the group’s top job in Illinois. Nobody would call that a McJob.
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