In 1996, McDonalds signed a ten year global marketing agreement with the Walt Disney Company to promote and help each other. Coincidentally, Ray Kroc and Walt Disney first met in an Army camp in Connecticut in 1918, when both were unknown visionaries.
When McDonald’s Pushkin Square opened in the heart of Moscow on January 31, 1990, it broke all opening day records for customers served, and is still the busiest branch in the world. The former Soviet Union now has 79 restaurants.
The largest McDonald’s in the world opened in 1992 in Beijing, and there are over 400 McDonald’s in China.
In 1995, McDonald's achieved a record 10 new country openings in a single year. In Singapore, McDonald's had a record of 20 restaurant openings in 1996. Even before the year 2000, its initial target date, McDonald's has already served its 100th billion hamburger in 1993 and opened 18,000 restaurants in 1995.
By the beginning of the century, there were about 25,000 McDonald's restaurants around the world, annual revenues stood at about $15 billion, and over 400,000 employees worked for the company, which had become a symbol of America around the world. In the Chicago area, the company employed about 6,000 people.
Today, McDonalds is the largest and best-known global foodservice retailer with more than 30,000 restaurants, serving 52 million customers each day in 118 countries. We plan to expand our leadership position through great tasting food, superior service, everyday value & convenience. Fortune Magazine released its 2007 list of America's Most Admired Companies ranking McDonald's Corporation as one of the top companies in the Food Services Industry category.