Justdroppedin
10-31-2023, 12:24 PM
McDonald's left Iceland on 30 October 2009, as a result of the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis and high import tariff on imported ingredients.
The franchise owner decided to close down all McDonald's operations and replaced them with their own franchise, Metro.
1 November 2019
By Georgina Rannard
When McDonald's closed all its restaurants in Iceland in 2009, one man decided to buy his last hamburger and fries.
"I had heard that McDonald's never decompose so I just wanted to see if it was true or not," Hjortur Smarason told AFP.
This week, it's 10 years since the seemingly indestructible meal was purchased, and it barely looks a day older.
Curious observers can watch a live stream of the burger and fries from its current location in a glass cabinet in Snotra House, a hostel in southern Iceland.
"The old guy is still there, feeling quite well. It still looks quite good actually," the hostel's owner Siggi Sigurdur told BBC News.
"It's a fun thing, of course, but it makes you think about what you are eating. There is no mould, it's only the paper wrapping that looks old."
The hostel claims that people come from around the world to visit the burger, and the website receives up to 400,000 hits daily.
In their short existence, the burger and fries have moved around a lot.
In the first stage of Mr Smarason's investigation into how quickly the food would decay, it was kept in a plastic bag in his garage.
When after three years, he detected little change in its composition, he donated the meal to the National Museum of Iceland.
A museum specialist eventually decided they were not equipped to preserve food and it was returned to its original owner, according to Snotra House.
"I think he was wrong because this hamburger preserves itself," Mr Smarason commented.
After a spell in a different hostel in Reykjavík, the meal moved to its current home...
https://i.redd.it/plnp5ncd2dxb1.jpg
The franchise owner decided to close down all McDonald's operations and replaced them with their own franchise, Metro.
1 November 2019
By Georgina Rannard
When McDonald's closed all its restaurants in Iceland in 2009, one man decided to buy his last hamburger and fries.
"I had heard that McDonald's never decompose so I just wanted to see if it was true or not," Hjortur Smarason told AFP.
This week, it's 10 years since the seemingly indestructible meal was purchased, and it barely looks a day older.
Curious observers can watch a live stream of the burger and fries from its current location in a glass cabinet in Snotra House, a hostel in southern Iceland.
"The old guy is still there, feeling quite well. It still looks quite good actually," the hostel's owner Siggi Sigurdur told BBC News.
"It's a fun thing, of course, but it makes you think about what you are eating. There is no mould, it's only the paper wrapping that looks old."
The hostel claims that people come from around the world to visit the burger, and the website receives up to 400,000 hits daily.
In their short existence, the burger and fries have moved around a lot.
In the first stage of Mr Smarason's investigation into how quickly the food would decay, it was kept in a plastic bag in his garage.
When after three years, he detected little change in its composition, he donated the meal to the National Museum of Iceland.
A museum specialist eventually decided they were not equipped to preserve food and it was returned to its original owner, according to Snotra House.
"I think he was wrong because this hamburger preserves itself," Mr Smarason commented.
After a spell in a different hostel in Reykjavík, the meal moved to its current home...
https://i.redd.it/plnp5ncd2dxb1.jpg