McDonald's opens vegetarian fast food restaurants

McDonald’s, the US-based hamburger chain, is to open its first ever vegetarian-only outlets in two Indian pilgrimage centres as it seeks to expand in a market where cows are sacred and beef-eating is taboo.

The two vegetarian McDonald’s are due to open next year in the city of Amritsar, home to the Golden Temple, the holiest site of India’s Sikh faith, and the small town of Katra, the jump-off point for Hindus visiting the mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi, the second busiest pilgrimage site in India.

McDonald’s decision to open vegetarian-only outlets in the two holy places reflects the concessions that foreign fast-food chains are making to local Indian tastes, as they seek to cater to a huge and fast-growing market for affordable restaurant meals by young people, and families on limited budgets.

“A vegetarian store makes absolute sense in the places which are famous as pilgrimage sites,” said Rajesh Kumar Maini, a spokesman for McDonald’s India. (Penzcentrum.hu)