KFC has become the first major Western fast-food chain to open a restaurant in Myanmar, with the grand unveiling of an outlet in the country’s commercial capital on Tuesday.
Images from the restaurant’s opening in Rangoon show large crowds. Reports from Agence France-Presse suggest that some customers lined up for hours to eat at the restaurant, which sits on a busy central street.
“It is internationally famous, so I think it must be healthy,” one 50-year-old man told AFP.
The KFC outlet is the product of an agreement between the American fast-food giant and Yoma Strategic Holdings, a Singapore-listed company that is focusing on Myanmar.
Yoma Strategies recently told the Myanmar Times that the company planned to open several KFC restaurants in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, before the end of the year. The company said it is aiming to create an aspirational product for Myanmar’s growing middle class. Two-piece chicken meals are selling for about 3,500 kyats ($3.10), AFP reports.
KFC isn’t the first international fast-food chain to reach Myanmar, which opened up to the world in 2010 when its military government began a process of democratic reform: South Korean burger chain Lotteria opened in 2013, for example.
The arrival of Western fast-food chains in formerly restrictive nations is often taken as a sign of progress, however. In 1996, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman offered his now-famous “McDonald’s theory,” which argues that no two countries that have branches of McDonald’s have gone to war.
That theory hasn’t quite held up, however: Joshua Keating of Slate cites the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia as two examples. And just last year, the McDonald’s in Moscow near Pushkin Square, which opened to much fanfare in 1990, faced calls for its closure.
KFC has made a big push for emerging markets in recent years. But it has faced slowing sales in China amid fears of the avian flu and other safety concerns. Other companies may still be wary about opening branches in Myanmar: Many feel that its government has not fully shaken off its authoritarian habits. Elections later this year in Myanmar will be closely watched.
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