Tycoon’s 10-year crusade to get a Big Mac in Vietnam
7 Aug 2013 5:08 AM IST
Tycoon Henry Nguyen mopped floors, flipped burgers and even cleaned toilets over a 10-year campaign to convince McDonald’s Corp to let him bring Big Macs and Happy Meals to communist Vietnam. McDonald’s is making a late entry into this market, where Yum Brands Inc already has dozens of Pizza Hut and KFC outlets and Burger King Worldwide Inc has 15 restaurants. Even Starbucks Corp debuted in Ho Chi Minh City in February and opened its second branch last week.
Capitalism has taken root in a country that many Americans associate more with an unpopular war than rising wealth.
The super-rich are becoming household names in Vietnam, which showcased its first billionaire in June on the cover of its inaugural edition of Forbes magazine.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who set up Pizza Hut in Vietnam six years ago, says he has lived and breathed McDonald’s.
He studied its business model as part of his master’s degree, and pursued the Vietnam franchise opportunity for a decade - even as he worked with rival Yum. When he visited his hometown of Chicago, he would meet McDonald’s executives at the company’s headquarters in suburban Oak Brook, Illinois. The Golden Arches will first appear in Ho Chi Minh City in early 2014 and later in the capital Hanoi, but the expansion will be ‘step by step’, said Nguyen, who worked at McDonald’s in the United States as a teenager and again this year at a Singapore outlet.
Capitalism has taken root in a country that many Americans associate more with an unpopular war than rising wealth.
The super-rich are becoming household names in Vietnam, which showcased its first billionaire in June on the cover of its inaugural edition of Forbes magazine.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who set up Pizza Hut in Vietnam six years ago, says he has lived and breathed McDonald’s.
He studied its business model as part of his master’s degree, and pursued the Vietnam franchise opportunity for a decade - even as he worked with rival Yum. When he visited his hometown of Chicago, he would meet McDonald’s executives at the company’s headquarters in suburban Oak Brook, Illinois. The Golden Arches will first appear in Ho Chi Minh City in early 2014 and later in the capital Hanoi, but the expansion will be ‘step by step’, said Nguyen, who worked at McDonald’s in the United States as a teenager and again this year at a Singapore outlet.
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