Rent of first McDonald's small fraction of today's
City's first McDonald's graced Paterson Street site for HK$64,500 a month, compared with HK$1.58m for Russell Street outlet it's vacating
It's hard to believe now, with McDonald's forced out of its Russell Street premises by a tripling of the rent to HK$1.58 million a month, but when the US fast-food chain opened its first Hong Kong outlet around the corner in Paterson Street in 1975, it paid just HK$64,500 per month in rent.
The 10-year lease was for a 3,000-square-foot ground-floor space at 2-20 Paterson Street, which at the time was next to the Japanese department store Matsuzakaya.
Today, that same space in the Hang Lung Centre would cost as much as HK$3 million per month, or the equivalent of 156,250 Big Macs, based on data from a few years ago, according to Joe Lin, senior director of retail services at property consultant CBRE. A Hang Lung Centre spokeswoman refused to disclose the current rental rate for the same space.
Cosmetics chain Sa Sa, which is taking over McDonald's 6,000 sq ft space on the first floor of 8 Russell Street in October, will pay HK$263 in rent per square foot per month. By comparison, the first McDonald's ground-floor space around the corner cost HK$21.50 per square foot per month.
Still, Sa Sa's rent is a lot less than that for street-level stores in Russell Street, which in the second quarter of this year rented for some HK$1,800 per square foot per month - the most in the world - according to property agent Cushman & Wakefield.
The lease for the first McDonald's was signed in October 1974 and included incremental increases over its 10-year duration.