McDonald's Buys All 225 Israeli Franchise Restaurants Amidst Boycott Calls (image@McDonaldsCorp)

Despite receiving heavy criticism and boycott call over giving away thousands of free meals to Israeli occupation force, McDonald’s said it would buy back all of its Israeli restaurants. The fast food giant said it reached an agreement with franchisee Alonyal Limited and decided to take back the ownership of 225 outlets in Israel that employ more than 5,000 people.

Though McDonald is a global company, most of its franchise are owned locally and operated autonomously. The US based fast food franchise CEO Chris Kempczinski earlier said that the company had seen “meaningful business impact” in several Middle East outlets and some outside of the region due to Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

CEO and owner of Alonyal Limited, Omri Padan in a statement said that for more than 30 years, Alonyal has been proud to bring the “Golden Arches to Israel and serve our communities”. McDonald’s said that it remains committed to the Israeli market and ensure a positive employee and customer experience going forward.

The terms of the transaction between McDonald’s and Alonyal is not revealed yet. It is said that after the completion of the transaction, the former will own all of Alonyal’s outlets and operations while retaining its employees.

In February CEO of the American fast-food chain Chris Kempczinski said that the Israel-Hamas war had had a “disheartening” effect on sales in Middle Eastern countries and other Muslim majority nations like Malaysia and Indonesia. He said, “so long as this conflict, this war, is going on … we’re not expecting to see any significant improvement in this”. He called Israel’s war on Gaza as a “human tragedy” and added that the war does weigh on brands like McDonald’s.

Sales growth of McDonald’s division for the Middle East, China, and India during October to December reached 0.7 percentage, which is huge dip from the market expectation of 5.5 percentage.

Apart from McDonald’s, another company that faced huge loss over the boycott calls in relation with their stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war was Starbucks. The Seattle-based coffee chain CEO, Laxman Narasimhan said that the boycott calls have been “influenced by misrepresentation on social media”. Last week, the café chain slashed its annual sales forecast, and cited a slump in business in the Middle East