Masterton McDonald’s was busy on Wednesday. PHOTO/ALEYNA MARTINEZ
Manning McDonald’s hard work
ALEYNA MARTINEZ
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Big Macs are the burger of choice “by a country mile” for hungry Wairarapa patrons who queued up at McDonald’s on Wednesday after it was closed for the past month during lockdown.
Masterton McDonald’s owner Andre Du Preez said hungry customers embraced the sunny day on Wednesday, travelling together in their Alert Level 3 bubbles.
Spirits were high as music blared from cars, and people were happy to wait for their favourites off the menu.
“We haven’t stopped cooking fries since five o’clock this morning,” Du Preez told the Times-Age.
As lunch time queues wound around the block, Du Preez, with the help of police, changed the drive-through entrance from Chapel St to Albert St, “to take the pressure off”.
“As we saw this unfolding, I went and had signs made which I put up at about 1pm,” Du Preez said.
“We must remember that when we closed, we didn’t know what to expect,” he said about the traffic that backed up past the Chapel St roundabout just over four weeks ago.
Du Preez said each carload made “massive orders” consistently from 11am until about 3pm.
“It’s not like you’re just buying for yourself or one other person, people have been buying for maybe four, five, six people.”
He stressed that staff were servicing cars a bit slower than usual, “but we cannot staff our kitchen with the normal amount of people we have because of the Ministry of Health guidelines that we have to adhere to in terms of social distancing in the operational kitchen”.
All 78 staff members had to take online training modules before they could restart work.
This was carried out by McDonald’s head office and was mandatory for all staff.
It focused on cash handling procedures and facing customers in person.
“Enormous amount of work has gone into getting prepared for the opening and it’s been about getting the delivery of stock in and working on social distancing.”
