KUALA LUMPUR: McDonald’s continued its growth trajectory by further opening 3 brand new restaurants and remodelling 4 restaurants within the first 100 days under the new Developmental Licensee (DL) ownership as part of its broader 2025 expansion blueprint to double store count in Malaysia.
It is against this backdrop of strong growth that Lionhorn Pte Ltd was first announced as the DL for McDonald’s Malaysia in late 2016. This move marks a critical milestone in McDonald’s Corporation’s ongoing efforts to identify strategic partners to accelerate growth, scale across diverse markets, drive innovation and place the brand even closer to its customers and the communities it serves.
Under the DL structure, Lionhorn Pte Ltd will provide the capital necessary to support and grow the business while day-to-day management of the Malaysia market will continue to be led by local leadership with the market knowledge and insight require to driving business success in Malaysia.
In a business briefing on Thursday marking 100 days since the announcement, McDonald’s unveiled a strong start to the partnership and its aggressive three-year accelerated growth plan. McDonald’s Malaysia Managing Director / Operating Partner, Azmir Jaafar attributes these plans in Malaysia to the many strengths its new ownership model brings to the brand.
“2016 was a record-breaking year for us with an all-time high year-on-year revenue growth of 16 percent. The Lionhorn Group partnership comes at just the right time to take McDonald’s in Malaysia to its next lap of growth. The flexibility to enable more agile investments and innovation, built on a foundation of shared values and a strong track record of the Group’s two decades of experience in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is the right combination to help us achieve our aggressive, short-term three-year growth plan and our larger 2025 expansion blueprint,” said Azmir, who has been at the helm of the McDonald’s brand across its strongest growth years.
With a network of 262 restaurants and 12,000 employees serving 13.5 million customers each month, McDonald’s three-year growth plan will add 33 new restaurants, 86 remodelled restaurants and create 2,000 new jobs, on the back of a robust MYR 363 million investment. This will ladder up to McDonald’s 2025 longer-term expansion blueprint to double its restaurants to 450.
“The Development License model enables us to prioritize Malaysian needs in local market decisions, thereby facilitating increased growth and opportunities for our staff, suppliers, customers and investors alike,” added Azmir.
“Together with our DL owners, McDonald’s in Malaysia will continue to be a company with Malaysians serving Malaysians and we look forward to towards doing more of what made our performance great in 2016 – particularly in giving back to the communities that have supported us and made McDonald’s our customers’ favourite place to be since 1982.”
An integral part of McDonald’s growth in Malaysia is also focused on growing its strong community support. In 2016, McDonald’s supported over 2000 community activities, reaching Malaysians from all walks of life. The Lionhorn Group partnership will further intensify these community efforts, with more activities coming up in 2017.
