Market Watch: The business of burgers, fries and cola

No parent needs to be told how difficult it is to distract a child from insisting on burgers and fries, and Coke or Pepsi.

Advertisements portraying fast food restaurants as a happy place where burgers and fries are provided for everybody at any hour of the day - even late at night - are a strong pull not easy to resist by the very young, the young, not-so-young and the young-at-heart.

And what do burger makers say: "The basic food for the person is bread, potatoes and meat - and we are serving it in a healthy, fast and controlled way."

Yes, it make sense. Needless to say that nowadays, people are living at a very fast pace, where everything should run quickly and as done as soon as possible and in the best possible manner. In fast food restaurants, the meal is ready in five minutes, at a fairly reasonable price - and still taste 'yummy'. And the most convenient thing is that they are all over - in shopping centres and high streets.

The I.E.O.P. (informal-eating-out-places) restaurants do not serve people fast food, they serve meals in quick time, say burger chefs.

The business' annual volume stands at around Dh600 to Dh800 million in the UAE, said Rafic Fakih, managing director for McDonald's Emirates, Emarati-owned and operated by Emirates Fast Food Corp. "Almost 40 per cent of the people in the UAE visit the quick-service restaurants.