New concept of McDonald’s opens in Hong Kong

McDonald's has opened a new dining concept in Hong Kong, called McDonald's Next. The store opening was intended to mark McDonald's 40th anniversary in Hong Kong.

McDonald's Next is located in the city's major shopping hub in Admiralty Area, near the main Central district in Hong Kong. The fastfood restaurant is said to nearly unrecognizable from the common McDonald's restaurants. The store adopts open-concept eatery with new features.

According to Brand Channel, what makes Hong Kong's McDonald's Next unique is the personalization, interactive design and social nature of the dining experience.

McDonald's Next spreads out over 6,000 square feet of shiny and bright lights. The restaurant decked out in a more muted palette of grey, brown and metallic stones, instead of McDonald's familiar colour scheme of red, yellow, and white.

According to Metro, McDonald's Next design includes subdued lighting, concrete, red glass, and a lot of stainless steel. The futuristic look restaurant is designed by a design company Landini Associates.

The store comes with 70 odd seats with charging stations and micro USB cord, Apple Lightning cords, and pre-Lightning iPhone cords.

The restaurant boasts a large salad bar, an open central kitchen, and a water fountain with McCups. McDonald's Next is open until 1:00 am.

Customers order at an open kitchen called a "theater kitchen". The theater kitchen is a large glass counter that showcases the ingredients. McDonald's Next also offers table service after 6:00 pm.

McDonald's Next also features the improved Create Your Taste touchscreen offering a whole new level of personalization and customer experience. The custom Create Your Taste digital ordering is already offered in some McDonald's branches around the world and launched in Hong Kong in 2014. The digital ordering feature allows customers to customize and order burgers and chicken sandwiches with touchscreen kiosks.

According to Business Insider, McDonald's Next offers some improvements to the Create Your Taste digital orderingfeature including customizable salad option, with various ingredients such as couscous, quinoa, asparagus, and crayfish. The customizable salad specifically evokes McDonald's Australian concept location called The Corner.

McDonald's Next also offers McCafe menu including gourmet coffee in smartly design packaging. It offers bagged premium Ethiopian Sidamo coffee beans. Other menu changes include a Belgian waffle with berries as a desert choice. Coffee beverages served with latte foam art of characters in the new Peanut movie, and a gingerbread man design.

Unfortunately, the futuristic changes in McDonald's Next come with the higher prices for the menus. The customers can spend up to HKD60 or about $7.74 for the salad. The build-a-burger menu from the Create Your Taste feature would cost the customers around HKD60 - 70 or about $7.74 - 9.03.