Protests. A global pandemic. A two-year-long revolution. Sometimes, outside circumstances
are so great, they can wipe out a chain's entire existence in a single country.
McDonald's is the poster child of American fast food. With more than
13,000 U.S. locations and $8.71 billion in annual revenue from U.S. customers alone,
it's no wonder the chain wanted to see what it could accomplish overseas.
For the most part, McDonald's ventures abroad have been successful. The nearly $9
billion figure from America represents only around 38% of the company's annual revenue;
the rest of the $23.22 billion it rakes in every year comes from its international locations. But
not every nation loves a Big Mac. Bolivia, for example, did not want to super-size it,
or even large-size it, and the chain hasn't had a presence there since 2002.
The reason for its retreat after just five years is simple: McDonald's didn't make a lot of money
in Bolivia. Why? Well, that's a little more complicated. CNBC says it probably had something
to do with the country's general rejection of globalism and the fact that at the time,
most Bolivians lived in poverty or "extreme poverty." This didn't
leave a whole lot of people who could afford a box of McNuggets. Additionally,
Bolivians love their own food traditions, and there just wasn't any room for overpriced burgers.
Dunkin' Donuts entered the Indian market in 2012 with enough enthusiasm that it was
eventually able to open 77 locations. But it didn't last — in June of 2018,
Dunkin' announced that it was shuttering all but 37 of its stores within the region. The
ones that remained, the company said, would focus on "core categories" and also sell tea.
So what happened? Well, as it turns out, donuts and coffee are kind of a breakfast thing, and
Business Today says India just isn't really that into breakfast. According to the Dunkin' India
website, the company is still hanging on over there, but it appears to be down to 25 stores.
Dunkin' might be limping along in India, but not so much in the far north. The company
gave up on cracking the Icelandic market back in 2019. As Fréttablaðið explained,
the director of the company that ran Dunkin's Iceland operations said that
the costs of running the business there were just too high. Evidently,
they didn't think they could get away with raising prices to cover those costs.
The real reasons might be slightly more nuanced than that, however. According to a Reykjavik
Grapevine story, the 2015 arrival of the chain was met with mixed levels
of enthusiasm. Some younger people appeared to be looking forward to donuts and coffee,
while others declared their overall disgust. Local musician Krummi Björgvinsson even
posted a photo of himself standing in front of the franchise, thumbs down,
with a disparaging caption that included words like "conglomerate" and "uprising." Björgvinsson
may have directly addressed it in a follow-up question when he told the Revkjavik Grapevine
reporter that tourists don't visit Iceland so they can experience western-style capitalism.
"I f—--- love Dunkin', guy. What are you talkin' about?"
Summers in South Africa can be pretty hot, which makes it a natural fit for ... you
guessed it, ice cream. That's what Baskin-Robbins thought, anyway.
The ice cream chain opened its first South Africa location in 2016. How'd that go? Well,
three years later, it announced it would be closing Baskin-Robbins locations in that region,
citing poor performance. According to Niche Market, the problem was the same
one you probably experience every time you try to buy salad dressing at your local supermarket:
too many options. South Africans like to keep things simple, so 31 flavors — which by the way
is actually closer to 40 these days — is just too much. And unlike salad dressing, you can't
keep all that ice cream around until it finally sells because it's not exactly shelf-stable.
Besides overwhelming new customers with choices,
Niche Market also blamed part of Baskin-Robbins' failure in South Africa on a sluggish economy.
If you're like 62% of America, you can't imagine getting through a day without consuming at least
one cup of coffee. But just because you've normalized $5 Starbucks lattes as a daily
staple doesn't mean the rest of the world views them the same way. A big corporation can dream,
though, and that's exactly what Starbucks did in Israel: it dreamed. But alas, Starbucks' Israeli
business venture lasted just two years; it opened its first location in 2001 and was gone by 2003.
The coffee giant wanted to avoid opening in cities that experienced a lot of political turmoil,
such as the capital city of Jerusalem. So instead, it opened in "foodie town" Tel Aviv, where there
were already a ton of gourmet options for both locals and visitors. Starbucks might be used
to beating the mom-and-pop cafes in America, but the ones in Tel Aviv would not go down so easily.
But Better Marketing thinks another reason for the chain's failure there was that
its fast-paced environment didn't appeal to Israeli coffee drinkers,
who don't really like to take their joe to go. Also, they apparently just didn't
like the taste of Starbucks coffee, and that's kind of a big hurdle to overcome.
"Really bad coffee."
Culture can be a big barrier to the international success of American fast-food joints. Sometimes,
there just isn't a place for greasy burgers or overly sweet donuts in a country's way of life,
and that can doom new restaurants before they even get started. Japan,
though, doesn't really have a lot of qualms about American customs. In fact, the Land
of the Rising Sun has happily embraced several American fast-food brands, including McDonald's,
Starbucks, and Wendy's. So Subway probably wasn't worried when it tried to jump in on the action.
The company once had nearly 500 locations in Japan, but it's now down to less than 200.
Why? Well, Unseen Japan says it's simple: Japanese folks just aren't that into sandwiches. Now, the
website also notes that there is at least a small sandwich tradition in Japan — notably, there's the
katsu sandwich. But evidently, Subway did not attempt to cater to the very small appetite for
sandwiches that already existed in the country and instead gave itself the insurmountable challenge
of trying to create a demand that didn't already exist. Also, the stores didn't look great and the
menu was complicated, which was enough to convince most customers to pass on Subway.
"My name is Subway." "Not anymore.
The bread is stale." "No! No!"
McDonald's and Burger King are big in Europe, with locations everywhere from the United Kingdom to
Romania. But there's one American burger joint you won't find anywhere in mainland Europe: Wendy's.
It's not for lack of trying. Wendy's once had a presence in parts of Europe, beginning in Munich,
West Germany in the late 1970s. Their European run was pretty short, though, and no one seems
to recall the actual reasons why they shuttered all their across-the-pond locations in the 1980s.
More importantly, Wendy's has failed to return to the European market, even though it evidently
desperately wants to. The reason apparently has to do with trademarks. Shortly after Wendy's
retreated from Europe, a small-time fish-n-chips shop trademarked the name "Wendy's," and that's
basically been the sole mechanism behind the fast-food giant's absence from Europe.
Wendy's, of course, fought back, but so far, European courts have not sided with big Wendy's,
as little Wendy's technically owns the name. But since Brexit,
Wendy's has been able to expand into the U.K. since it's no longer part of Europe.
You probably won't be shocked to hear this, but as it turns out, Italians don't like American
pizza. Yes, it's true. For some reason, Domino's thought opening restaurants in Italy was a good
idea, and it was wrong. Just seven years after its first location opened in 2015,
Domino's closed its doors for good. According to the BBC, COVID-19 lockdowns had at least
something to do with the brand's departure, but social media comments hinted at a more
insurmountable problem — Italians simply didn't enjoy Domino's pizza. That's pretty
obvious when you compare the chain's success in the U.K. to its ho-hum performance in Italy:
The former has 1,200 locations, while in the latter, the brand "peaked" at a mere 29.
Domino's tried to set itself apart from other Italian pizza shops by
offering home delivery and pineapple pizza. But during the COVID lockdowns,
delivery became more of a thing elsewhere, and pineapple pizza alone wasn't enough to elevate
it above all of the thousands of other, much more traditional Italian pizzerias.
"We're not so much a delivery country, we like to go out,
we like to socialize, we like to hang out with our friends."
There's a place for just about any kind of food wrapped up in a tortilla or stuffed
into a taco shell, but the mere presence of a tortilla or taco shell does not make
food Mexican. This probably has a lot to do with Taco Bell's failure south
of the border after bringing its first cart to Mexico City in 1992.
To their credit, Taco Bell wasn't completely ignorant of the fact
that their food likely wouldn't appeal to the locals. They even tried to make
their tacos a little more authentic with shredded meat instead of ground beef,
soft corn tortillas instead of hard shells, and locally sourced sauces.
It's not clear how close Taco Bell got to mimicking a traditional taco,
but the food itself isn't really what doomed them. Instead, Mental Floss says
the locals took offense to the audacity of the chain and its attempt to out-taco the
taco in its own birthplace. And, the food wasn't even that cheap. Locals could still
buy an authentic taco from a street vendor and save money over Taco Bell's facsimile.
Although the attempt was a flop, Taco Bell remained undeterred.
It tried again in the 2000s — this time with its regular Taco Bell menu,
which it even advertised as "not pretend[ing] to be Mexican food." That flopped, too,
and the chain went limping back over the border just three years later.
Chick-fil-A is probably America's most controversial fast-food restaurant. Its
woes date all the way back to 2011 when Equality Matters uncovered $1 million in
Chick-fil-A donations to anti-LGBTQ+ causes. Still, not every American shunned the fried
chicken chain after the scandal broke, and Chick-fil-A has mostly managed to weather
the storm. But the company's new identity as anti-LGBTQ+ stuck with it for a long time.
It even followed the chain across the pond when it tried to branch out into the United Kingdom.
Chick-fil-A opened up in a Reading, England shopping center called The Oracle in October 2019,
and by the following April, it had already shut down. Officially, the shopping center decided not
to renew the restaurant's lease, but unofficially, it was because no one in the U.K. wanted to eat
there. Similarly, a Chick-fil-A that opened in Scotland lasted only three months. It was sunk
by local protests and a petition signed by 1,000 people. According to the Advocate, that location
went down fast because of boycott calls — not just directed toward the Chick-fil-A itself,
but toward the hotel where it was located and all the other hotels owned by the same company.
That was too much for hotel management,
especially when the boycott spread to include its luxury property and the
wealthy politicians who sometimes stayed there. Chick-fil-A got the boot, and off it went.
Some countries enjoy a little bit of American culture, while others despise it. This is why
companies like McDonald's and KFC will probably never have a presence in places that identify
as enemies of the United States, such as Iran and North Korea. But it may surprise you to hear that
American fast food did once have a presence in Iran. In fact, in the 1970s there was a McDonald's
and a KFC in Tehran — Iran's capital city. That all came to an end in 1979 when the religious
clerics seized control of the government following a two-year-long revolution. With
Ayatollah Khomeini now in control of the nation, there was no longer any place for
representatives of American culture — especially fast food. All those restaurants shuttered,
and the country has been free from western-style burgers and fried chicken ever since.
Well, sort of. Not everyone celebrated the disappearance of American fast food. In today's
Iran, you can find knock-off fast food joints like Sheak Shack, Pizza Hat, and Halal KFC — though
Halal KFC was closed down by authorities a few days after its grand opening. The restaurant
wasn't affiliated with KFC, but its logo featured the same black-and-white line art of Colonel
Sanders everyone recognizes, so it's easy to see how the authorities could have made that mistake.
"Hey, that's not the real Colonel Sanders, I'm the real Colonel Sanders!"