Quick service restaurant/McDonald's

Editorial staff

McThai Co, the operator of McDonald’s Thailand, continues its expansion with the second green concept store in a prime Rama 2 road, featuring Thailand’s first-ever ‘CUBE’ design.

Kittiwan Anuwatesakul, the company's chief executive officer, said that McDonald’s Thailand is taking a significant step towards its goal of reducing environmental impact under the ‘Happy Green’ concept.

Kittiwan Anuwatesakul

Following the success of its first green concept store at the Liab Klong Song branch, the company invested 50 million baht to open its second McDonald’s green concept store in Thailand at ‘Nakornthon Rama 2 location with eco-friendly construction, design, and decoration for reducing energy consumption.

Additionally, the company has introduced a fresh and innovative touch with Thailand’s first-ever ‘CUBE’ design, integrating McDonald’s three core principles, to deliver an impressive customer experience.

The ‘CUBE’ design is inspired by McDonald’s three core principles in delivering a memorable customer experience, unified through the perspective of a 3D cube. These principles include order anywhere & service, convenient service with the ability to order from anywhere.
Quality time & speed and hospitality & delicious food.

The ‘CUBE’ design is expressed through square-shaped graphic elements, with wall decorations featuring images dispersed in a way that symbolizes an explosion of flavor and polaroid-style pictures, representing McDonald’s iconic menu items and symbols, such as burgers, coffee, and the brand logo. The design also emphasizes a relaxing, warm, and comfortable atmosphere, using natural tones like terracotta and green color.

McDonald's Nakornthon Rama 2 branch continues to deliver the ‘Happy Green’ experience with enhanced  eco-friendly features with the following elements:

Exterior design with energy efficiency

The restaurant was designed with a 30-square-meter green wall and garden space, benefiting from the shade of large trees to increase the green area around the store. Grass blocks are used instead of concrete to reduce heat accumulation, lowering the average temperature entering the building by approximately 2-3 degrees celsius.

It also installs solar rooftop panels to maximize the use of solar energy, reducing electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, which are a major cause of global warming. This will help save an average of 10-15% on electricity costs.

In addition, the building features a double-layered facade with wood-patterned wall panels that filter heat before it reaches the building's walls. The design also includes shading devices, awnings for blocking direct sunlight, which operate in tandem with UV-filtering window films to reduce heat and UV radiation, thereby improving the efficiency of the air conditioning system.

Moreover, it also uses stored solar energy for outdoor lighting instead of electricity, reducing night-time electricity consumption by up to 100%.

The restaurant provides EV charging stations for alternative energy to electric vehicles with DC Quick Charge chargers with a power output of over 120 kilowatts.

It encourages customers to use bicycles, which helps save energy and reduce pollution, while also promoting good health.
 
Interior design with energy saving

The entire project uses LED lighting, which saves more than 80%-90% of lighting energy compared to incandescent bulbs. This system works in conjunction with motion sensors, such as in storage rooms, where lights activate when motion is detected and automatically turn off when no movement is detected.

It also provide low-water-consumption sanitary ware with automatic sensors to reduce water consumption by 20-30% as well as pre-cool system for air conditioner that enhances the cooling efficiency of the air conditioning system by lowering and stabilizing the temperature of the air before it passes through the condenser coil, reducing electricity consumption.

Others are used here include heat insulation materials to reduce the impact of sunlight and prevent heat radiation from entering the building as well as recycle bins, ensuring proper waste separation to facilitate recycling.

The restaurant uses eggshell plastic recycling trays that is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50%.

Ms. Kittiwan is highly confident that this new green concept store will gain positive feedback from customers and expect to drive revenue growth of 15% by the end of this year, following the revenue target.

“2024 is a challenging year for all. Through our 32 months operating McThai, our business continues to grow every year. We never stop our expansion for new branches and renovate existing branches to be more convenient and modern,” she said.

The company plans to open 10-15 stores this year. The latest branch will be opened at international airport in Phuket tomorrow.