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Whistler burghers eat up 10 cent burgers

10 th anniversary promotion by local McDonald’s timed to help seasonal employees It’s 12:10 p.m. on a Wednesday. Whistler Village is almost empty, but one restaurant is so full of people the servers are struggling to keep up.

10 th anniversary promotion by local McDonald’s timed to help seasonal employees

It’s 12:10 p.m. on a Wednesday. Whistler Village is almost empty, but one restaurant is so full of people the servers are struggling to keep up.

Despite the onslaught of people the servers at Whistler McDonald’s continue to ask the essentials questions: "Would you like fries with that?"

"How many burgers do you want?"

Suddenly a bell goes off and the sundae machine stops working. Fortunately it’s only a momentary thing.

At the same time about 20 more burgers slide down the cook top.

The store’s owner, Tom Horler, is standing about six feet away – right in the middle of the mayhem.

Horler’s got a tray full of burgers and a beeping computer to deal with.

But a minute later the burgers have disappeared, Horler has skillfully dodged three of his workers and arrived at the front counter to say "hello".

It’s day five of Horler’s 10 cent hamburger deal and it’s already clear there would be no let up for staff until the promotion ends on Nov. 10.

After serving more than 99 million customers since its inception in 1955, the golden arches have become one of the most recognized brands on the planet.

And when you look at what Horler has been doing at Whistler McDonald’s during the past two weeks, it’s easy to fathom how the brand became, and remains, a powerful fast food empire.

To celebrate his store’s 10 th anniversary Horler offered 10 cent hamburgers with the purchase of any fries and drink. When the store was busy there was a limit of five burgers at a time, but people were free to come back as often as they liked.

The deal became so popular that not only did it create a "buzz" around Whistler, people travelled from other towns to buy meals at Whistler McDonald’s.

"It’s funny because yesterday I spoke to a guy from Brackendale who drove up here to get dinner for his family," Horler said.

"He got two milks for his kids, two small fries and 10 hamburgers, which cost him about $6."

The premise behind Horler’s promotion is logical enough: 10 year anniversary, 10 day celebration, 10 cent burgers.

But the store’s actual anniversary is not until Nov. 29.

Horler decided to have the celebrations early because "that’s when the community needs it most."

While Horler is right about the needs of the community, he is also the former director of marketing for McDonald’s Asia-Pacific and clearly knows how and when to seize a business opportunity.

"I first came to Whistler in 1983 and I know what happens here around this time of year," Horler said.

"The place is full of people looking for work. They have spent their last dime getting here, their last penny getting a place to live and they’ve got no money.

"Everyone’s waiting for a paycheque but when the snow’s not here no one’s hiring.

"But by the 29 th the problem might be over. So I thought why don’t we do something earlier when the people need it most?"

Whether people have money or not, this hamburger deal could not have come at a more opportune time because Horler was selling them "by the bag full."

"This has been so good I’m already thinking about doing it again next year," Horler said.

There are only 10,000 people living in Whistler, but by day five Whistler McDonald’s had sold 12,000 burgers and served 7,000 customers.

That equates to more than 550 kilograms of burgers. Sales on the opening Saturday, Nov. 1 were 62.2 per cent ahead of what the store had sold the Saturday before the hamburger promotion began.

"We expect to sell between 15,000 and 20,000 burgers," he said of the 10-day promotion.

These sales figures are also good news for Horler’s staff because unlike most other people in Whistler, they can work as many shifts as they like.

While the results of this burger promotion make Horler look like a special kind of entrepreneur, it’s actually just a Whistler version of a tried and tested tradition.

"When the McDonald brothers (Dick and Mac) started the chain in California in the late 1940s, their success came about largely because of the 15-cent burger, and the slogan was ‘buy ’em by the bag full,’" Horler said.

"Well, here we are 60 years later selling them for cheaper."

Dick and Mac McDonald created the burgers, but the idea for a chain of restaurants germinated when Raymond Kroc, a salesman from Chicago who mortgaged his home and invested his life savings into becoming the exclusive distributor of a milkshake maker called the Multimixer.

Kroc quickly sold eight Multimixers to the McDonalds in California and, according to the McDonald’s Web site, in 1954 he decided to drive there to see why his product had been so successful.

Kroc was amazed by how quickly the McDonalds were serving people and was convinced he could sell more Multimixers, so he pitched the idea to Dick and Mac about opening several restaurants.

McDonald’s has since spread to 110 countries, and expanded its menu to suite thousands of different cultures.

Horler said McDonald’s remains so successful because it has always been open to change.

"The saying is that we don’t want to be a restaurant in the community, we want to be the community’s restaurant," Horler said.

"I’m not getting dictated to from head office in Chicago, I’m running it the way I think it should be in Whistler."

The core McDonald’s menu is the same everywhere but the variety of their other products differs enormously.

"In the Philippines, we sell spaghetti – McSpaghetti – because that’s what’s popular down there and the company is flexible enough to experiment," he said.

"In China, McBone and Chicken is the highest selling product.

"In Japan Teriyaki Park sandwich is the best seller. We also sell fish products all day there because that’s what they like to eat.

"We say that it’s not what’s in the product, it’s what surrounds the product that counts."

While it’s obvious why Horler was successful in marketing, even he cannot deny that too much McDonald’s is not healthy for you.

The good news is that there’s no harm in eating the occasional hamburger.

However, if you do regularly eat several hamburgers, or large McDonald’s meals more than once a week, then the numbers suggest you might not be as healthy as you could be.

The recommended daily intake of calories for an adult male is up to 2,700, and for females it’s 2,000.

According to the McDonald’s Web site, when a customer eats a small hamburger meal, which could include a small soda, small fries and the burger, they are consuming 640 calories.

That calorie count rises to 1,760 if, like many of the people in Whistler did during the past two weeks, a customer consumes five hamburgers in one sitting.

But compared to the double quarter-pounder with cheese, the humble hamburger meal doesn’t rate. One large double quarter-pounder meal, including Coke and fries, contains 1,620 calories.

The remarkable thing is that while many people recognize there are health issues with overindulgence at McDonald’s, most blissfully ignore them.

"When something is this cheap, you’re not going to think about it (your health)," Gordi Monach, 21, from Kitchener, Ontario, said in Whistler McDonald’s as he waited for his five hamburgers to arrive.

"You might think about it half an hour later when you feel like you’re going to throw up, but right now it tastes good."

Monach and his friends, Brian Cameron and Ryan Katchum, were so happy about Horler’s hamburger deal they spoke as if they too had been through a McDonald’s marketing course.

"The mountain is a-buzz with this deal. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know about it," 19-year-old Cameron said.

"I think mostly because money is a huge concern at the moment.

"We came here about a month ago and moved into Brio House (staff housing) and we’ve got hardly any money left.

"Money and (getting) a season pass is our priority."

"Yeah, and when something like this comes up I plan to make full use of it," Katchum, 19, said as he ploughed into his first hamburger.

"This promotion is also a perfect way to let everyone know where McDonald’s is because there’s a lot of new people coming into town and you know when you come here that the food is going to be pretty cheap and safe," Monach said.

Horler’s deal also did a solid job helping many non-English speaking people settle into the area for the winter.

Pioqee, 24, from Japan said, in broken English, that she hardly ever ate McDonald’s in Japan. But since arriving two weeks earlier, the lure of the 10-cent burger became impossible for her to ignore.

"I have lots of burgers… it’s cheap," she said.