McDonald's Is Planning to Open 200 New Locations in This Market

McDonald's currently operates a whopping 39,000 restaurants around the globe, with as many as 1,000 new locations opening annually. While surely that level of growth cannot be maintained forever, at least one market appears ripe for further expansion in the near future, or so company execs hope. That market is Italy.

The European country is currently home to 630 McDonald's restaurants—a mere 0.62% of the world's McDonald's locations. According to the chief executive of the McDonald's corporation in Italy, Dario Baroni, the chain is looking to add approximately 200 new restaurants in the country by 2025. This will result in thousands of job openings.

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"Italy is seen by the group as one of the markets with the greatest potential on a global scale," Baroni said, indicating that he hoped to see the overall number of locations surpass 800 by some time in the year 2025. He also stated that he hoped to see McDonald's employ some 40,000 people in its Italian locations by 2025, compared with the 25,000 it currently has on staff.

The potential for McDonald's to expand in Italy is largely due to changes in both consumer and restaurant practices accelerated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As in other markets, McDonald's has experienced a huge uptick in take-away and delivery food service in Italy. This mirrors the changing marketplace in the United States, home to more than 13,450 McDonald's locations.

McDonald's just signed newly reworked deals with two of the major food delivery companies in the American marketplace: Uber Eats and DoorDash, which demonstrates its commitment to newer business models.

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