McDonald’s sets up in the heart of French villages

In a Vendée town of 2,600 inhabitants, La Châtaigneraie, you can see through the bay windows of the McDonald’s the fields, the departmental road and the large supermarket car park. A well-known landscape of rural France. It’s noon. A grandmother and her two grandsons settle in, two retirees chat, workers enter.

Hugo, 6 years old, surrounded by his mother and grandmother, is in heaven. At the end of March 2025, the yellow M sign arrived in La Châtaigneraie, located fifty minutes by car from La Roche-sur-Yon, the prefecture. The improbable rumors were therefore true. Since then, the little boy eats two or three times a month in his favorite restaurant. “When he asks us after school, we go,” whispers the mother.

A recent strategy

With 1,589 restaurants in 2024, McDonald’s is today the most present restaurant brand in France. The company achieves a turnover of nearly six billion euros there, three times more than Burger King, its main competitor. Half of 18-35 year olds eat there at least once a month. Until 2020, McDonald’s considered that it had completed its conquest of territory. After saturated the cities and their outskirts, the chain only opened around twenty restaurants per year.

But the Covid-19 pandemic has reshuffled the cards. In the countryside, bistros and restaurants have closed one after the other. Bernard Boutboul, consultant and collaborator of McDonald’s for twenty years, remembers: “The managers saw the windfall. They said to themselves: “We are going to become the new place of conviviality.”

From 2021, McDonald’s will set up shop where cafes and truck stops have disappeared. The pace is first measured – twenty to twenty-five openings per year until 2024 – before accelerating: more than fifty in 2025, a third of which are in the countryside. “In 2026, we should exceed sixty openings,” anticipates Bernard Boutboul.

In the March 21, 2025 edition of Figaro, the firm’s marketing director, Jean-Guillaume Bertola, summed up the ultimate ambition: for every French person to have their McDonald’s less than twenty minutes from home.

In La Châtaigneraie, the brand has become in a few weeks one of the new centers of gravity in local life. “When there’s nothing to do, it’s McDonald’s,” summarizes Titouane, 17, a horticulture employee, sitting with friends over a burger and a soda. At lunchtime, it serves as a canteen. In the afternoon, we hang out there for a frozen dessert. And on Friday evening, meet after football practice. “Here, you know you’re going to run into someone you know,” he smiles.

In La Châtaigneraie, as in so many other small towns, the residents are rejoicing because the arrival of McDonald’s gives the impression that the town is coming out of its torpor. The brand fills the void left by the closure of the fishmonger, the butcher, two of the three bakeries, the café, the bookstore… For those who stay, there is no question of leaving. “We love our countryside”, the expression comes up often, as much as “There is nothing”, pronounced in a resigned tone. And when there is nothing, McDonald’s becomes a landmark, an open place where you still meet people.

Same observation in Andilly (Charente-Maritime), a town of 2,300 inhabitants not far from La Rochelle. “Here, there is no place for families,” says Émilie, a young mother stationed behind the counter of a tobacco bar. The opening of a McDonald’s in June was a blessing for the children. On this All Saints’ Day holiday, they crowd the fast-food restaurant at lunchtime.

Léona, 9 years old, is a regular: lunch at McDonald’s has become the Wednesday ritual. “It makes him happy,” confides his mother. In the kingdom of the burger, everything is done to please the schoolgirl. Clever marketing has been deployed at its destination since the 1960s. Léona wins toys in her Happy Meal (children’s menu), goes on a slide in the playground, eats strawberry-vanilla ice cream and receives one of the many books distributed since 2015.

“I was crying in the car on the way there,” remembers Floriane, 27, biting into the third hamburger from her Maxi Best Of menu. The young woman, overweight, hums M. Pokora’s hit broadcast by the Happy Meals music boxes of her childhood. She will continue the tradition with the baby she is carrying.

Her neighbor, the future godmother, has already taken her two-year-old daughter there: “She imitated me by dipping her nuggets in the sauce,” she smiles. McDonald’s, junk food? For parents, the restaurant chain first evokes their childhood memories.

A not-so-affordable outing

“We offer family and popular food,” proudly insists the manager, Laurent Lopez. The McDonald’s outlet is an affordable “extra” for tight budgets. However, low prices are sometimes deceptive. Orders are piling up and the best menus are not that cheap – between 10 and 17 euros for a Maxi Best Of.

France is the tenth country in the world where the menu is the most expensive, on average 12 euros. “The question of McDonald’s orders comes up regularly with the families in financial difficulty that I support. The bill regularly amounts to more than 100 euros per month,” confides Marie-Cécile, social and family economy advisor.

For many customers, ordering McDonald’s is an almost weekly habit. In certain corners of France, the brand is considered a basic business, in the same way as the Action clearance stores or the France Services buildings which were set up at the same time as it. Its proximity means fewer kilometers and therefore fewer cars to get there, an essential parameter in the countryside.

“When I haven’t cooked, I go get a takeaway meal, it’s a great help,” explains Guillaume, business manager and father of a little boy. Simple and fast, the chain has become the reference. “Often we rebel against the invasion of junk food, as if an external evil were contaminating us. In reality, fast food corresponds to our modern and fast lifestyles,” remarks Loïc Bienassis, food historian.

McDonald’s has made a lot of effort to blend into the French decor (see timeline at end of article). In the 1990s, when it was considered “the symbol of junk food and globalization,” the company strove to become “a French company,” says former France CEO Jean-Pierre Petit in his book I sold my soul to McDonald’s.

In restaurants in France, you can now be served at the table and eat 100% French fries. The American has adapted to the national gastronomic landscape. Ronald, the historic mascot, even disappeared from storefronts at the turn of the 2010s.

In 2025, the chain continues its expansion. His strategy is well established. The fast food restaurant is located at the intersection of several towns, along a departmental road, in a commercial area. These places are the new centers of a group of villages. “La Châtaigneraie is our local town,” explains Lyloo, 15, who came by scooter for a snack at McDonald’s with her friends.

In Andilly, the McDonald’s followed on the outskirts “the households driven out by the price of real estate which exploded in La Rochelle”, explains the mayor, Sylvain Fagot. The deployment of the channel in rural areas will not stop there. “A few more years,” estimates Bernard Boutboul. Land is cheap and competition non-existent, unlike in urban areas. In the countryside, first come, only served: McDonald’s will scoop up all the customers.

“Now that McDonald’s is here, we will come more often,” assures Sandrine, the mother of little Léona. “We appreciate more as adults what we loved as children,” observes Jacques Fricker, nutritionist. An emotional loyalty… which is not without health risks. Rich in sugars, salt and fats, fast food maintains eating habits that are difficult to break.

If McDonald’s France communicates very little about the composition of its products, UFC-Que Choisir detailed, in a July 2025 study, that of hamburgers sold in Switzerland (where transparency is mandatory), and found no less than 46 ingredients and additives. In Super Size Me, cult documentary released in 2004, the American Morgan Spurlock ate exclusively on McDonald’s for thirty days: he gained 11 kg and saw his liver deteriorate. Twenty years later, the message remains relevant.

Some residents, especially among the oldest, are categorically “anti-McDonalds”, saddened by standardization and the loss of traditions. In response, franchisees – the restaurant managers – are keen to emphasize their local integration. They subsidize sports clubs, host associations and, above all, create jobs.

But other businesses are suffering from the giant’s installation. At La Châtaigneraie, the friendly Christophe, who had been selling tacos to the whole village for fifteen years, closed his business six months after the McDonald’s opened.

Establishing yourself as a new bistro

In Bram, an Aude village of 3,250 inhabitants, a fast-food restaurant opened at the end of December 2024. On the day of the inauguration, opponents organized a market of local products in the parking lot. “This commercial area, near the motorway exit, is an ideal place to highlight the products of our region and support our farmers. Instead, we have a multinational,” regrets Lucas Gleizes, member of the departmental chamber of agriculture.

If McDo uses 75% French raw materials, they are not always local. Restaurants obtain their supplies from national purchasing centers, such as Rungis, supplied by farmers supervised by strict specifications.

The American giant replaces the bistros, a sign of a change of times. “Before, sociability was experienced with your neighbor, at the factory where everyone worked, and at the PMU. Today, the countryside is more fragmented,” analyzes Clément Reversé, sociologist of rural areas. We dine at McDonald’s with family and friends, but we no longer meet strangers at the bar, in associations or during community festivals.

In La Châtaigneraie, a café opened in 2020 has brought life back to the center of the village, which had been sluggish for several years. But this was only possible thanks to the financing of the premises by the town hall. “Otherwise, there are only big brands like McDonald’s to set up here,” recognizes Thierry, the owner. In rural France threatened by emptiness, American fast food is not so much an invader: it occupies a place left free.