BurgerOff Tecoma: McDonald’s Corp (MCD) Fights To Enter A Town That Doesn’t Want It

The Golden Arches are going up in Tecoma, but residents of the small Australian town aren’t lovin’ it.
After flying almost 10,000 miles this week, a group of Australian activists are taking their two-year fight with McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE:MCD) to its own front door, and they say they won’t stop until the fast-food giant agrees to take a permanent McHike. On Thursday, representatives of the BurgerOff activist movement said they planned to deliver a petition to McDonald’s headquarters in suburban Chicago, calling on the company to abandon its plans to build a 24-hour restaurant and drive-thru in Tecoma, a small town east of Melbourne. The group says the proposed site is too close to a kindergarten and school, and kids as young as 5 would walk past “a giant advertisement for junk food” on a daily basis.
Launched on Change.org by BurgerOff’s spokesman, Garry Muratore, the petition has attracted more than 97,000 supporters. It is just one part of a massive grassroots effort that has included outlandish demonstrations, flash mobs, community outreach and a focused social media campaign. On Wednesday, members of the group inflated about a dozen toy kangaroos in a protest outside of a McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago, according to Melbourne’s Herald Sun.

Arvind Kumar Pathak
PGDM 3rd