Moscow's Big Mak Attack

Sixteen-year-old Nadya Vanova listens intently as a customer orders a Big Mak, kartofel-fries and an ice-cream koktel, or milkshake. After punching the order into one of 29 computerized cash registers, she nods and says, "Thank you. Please come again." But assistant manager Sergei Skvortsov, 25, shakes his head unhappily as he observes her trial run. "Nyet," he tells the nervous trainee. "Try again. You must look each customer in the eye and smile."

Young Nadya is one of 605 employees chosen from 27,000 Soviet applicants who responded to a small help-wanted ad that McDonald's officials placed last November. After 14 years of negotiating a maze of Soviet bureaucrats, the first McDonald's in the Soviet Union is scheduled to open this week. Situated on Pushkin Square, just a few blocks from the Kremlin, the restaurant will introduce a new concept: fast food. To handle the anticipated Big Mak attack, the McDonald's has a seating capacity of 700, the largest in the 11,300- restaurant chain, and can serve as many as 15,000 customers a day.

McDonald's has built restaurants from Seattle to Singapore, but completing the first of 20 planned outlets in the Soviet Union was a triumph over the country's endless red tape and ancient infrastructure. A joint venture of the Canadian subsidiary of McDonald's and the Moscow city council, the $50 million project fell through several times before it was finally signed in April 1988. Says George Cohon, president of McDonalds Restaurants of Canada: "When I had that first cheeseburger off the grill, I thought, 'This place is really going to open!' "

The biggest problem has been dealing with the Soviet ministries, which still adhere to rigid regulations in doling out precious supplies. Explains Cohon: "When we need more sand or gravel for building and go to the department in charge, they say, 'Sorry, you're not in my five-year plan.' "

The venture intends to buy virtually all its raw materials from Soviet producers, no small order in a country where many food products are rationed and the term quality control is not in the lexicon. The Moscow managers have imported potato and cucumber seeds from the Netherlands and have trained Soviet farmers to harvest and pack the produce without bruising it. They have taught Soviet cattle farmers that they can raise leaner beef by castrating their cattle a month later than usual and slaughtering them a month earlier. To maintain food standards and keep the supply flowing, the company has built a $40 million food-distribution plant just outside Moscow, with its own bakery, dairy and meat-processing units as well as a microbiology lab.

Starting salary at the Moscow McDonald's is 1.5 rubles an hour, average by Soviet standards and about $2.40 at the official exchange rate, but top managers can expect to earn more substantial wages. Alexander Omelchenko, 31, the dairy-line manager, says he earned 250 rubles a month working in a scientific institute before being hired by McDonald's. "I now make 450 rubles a month," he says proudly. "McDonald's is more demanding, but it offers me a chance to prove myself."