I don't know which is more disturbing - listening to one Clarence Valley shire councillor attempt to deny that the Yamba community has any right to self-determination or seeing the majority of councillors present fail to question McDonald's Australia when its representative spoke at the Environment, Economic & Community meeting on 11 May 2010.
With traffic a real issue for the community, McDonald's sought to 'massage' the matter away by trying to argue the statistics away.
It asserted words to the effect that the proposed store would never see 230 customers arriving by road in any one hour.
Of course what is did not clarify was that this 230 figure (contained in its own development application documents) represented vehicle movements both to and from this eat-in and drive through fast food outlet during evening peak hour.So in fact the number of individual vehicles would be 115.
McDonald's expects everyone to believe that a store with 112 seat capacity and 2 drive through bays would never see 115 people drive to its store at evening peak hour to pick up a quick dinner or eat one there?In a town which effectively doubles its population during principal tourism periods this would not be possible?
McDonald's start up cost estimates are hefty, so it defies belief that the multinational and its designated licensee would consider laying out that much money on a store they they suspected might under perform.
In Australia an average 1.2 million people reportedly went into a McDonald's store each day in 2007. As McDonald's had 753 stores across the country by that year [McDonald’s Australia Limited National Packaging Covenant Report 2007] this represents an estimated 1,594 customers per store.
With the Australian arm of the corporation continuing to experience increased sales and profits ($364 million profit last financial year) I expect that customer numbers have grown since then. McDonald's does not expect a store in Yamba to measure in its best performing global region?
Pull the other one it has bells on.
