Via CNN.com:
McDonald’s Corp. and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. announced an alliance Tuesday to build drive-through McDonald’s outlets, hoping to combine forces to profit from soaring Chinese car ownership.
Under the agreement, McDonald’s and the Chinese partner, known as Sinopec, will turn an unspecified number of the 30,000 gasoline service stations that Sinopec operates nationwide into drive-throughs, the companies said. Sinopec “will bring their knowledge of real estate. We’ll bring our knowledge of restaurateuring,” McDonald’s vice president Gary Rosen said in an interview.McDonald’s, which already has 760 restaurants in China, has said it foresees turning half of the 240-plus outlets it plans to open by 2008 into drive-throughs. It opened its first drive-through in China in the southern manufacturing center of Dongguan in December and followed with two more, in the cities of Foshan and Shanghai, in January.
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