McBattle: Burger Market Sizzles Like Never Before

The burger market sizzles like never before.

- Aresh Shirali

Two decades ago, India’s big fast food story was how the market had desified rather than deified McDonald’s, a model of efficiency that had worked just about everywhere else on the planet. In a twist of an old American saying, ‘Sell the sizzle not the steak’, the brand didn’t just keep its core global offering—beef—off its Indian menu, it went about selling the whole kitchen, so to speak: it had vegetarian and nonveg sections on display for all to see, complete with cooks in different coloured aprons to tell them apart. With its diet sensitivity credentials thus established in a famously fussy country, its McAloo Tikki potato burger was to prove a rage. McDonald’s Inc had success, marketers had a great case study of brand adaptation, consumers had a ‘burger’ defined as anything that could snuggle into a bun, and everyone knew who to thank—McDonald’s local partners. The company had entered India through a couple of 50:50 joint ventures (JVs) with Indian entrepreneurs. One of these was Connaught Plaza Restaurants, whose job was to open outlets in the north and east. The other JV was Hardcastle Restaurants, for the west and south. And they were both raring to span the horizon with those glowing arches.

Today, as the burger market sizzles with exciting new options, McDonald’s seems to have lost its early mover’s advantage, if not its allure. It is no longer India’s top fast-food chain. The No 1 for the past three years has been Domino’s, which now has over 1,000 outlets and gets every fifth rupee spent on fast food, according to data from Euromonitor, which tracks the sector closely. McDonald’s, which was the overall leader back in 2012, is now in