Near­ly eight years af­ter Mc­Don­ald's closed its stores in Trinidad due to low sales, the world's largest chain of fast food restau­rants is due to re­store its fa­mous gold­en arch­es sig­nage and its world fa­mous Big Mac to T&T. Mc­Don­ald's pre­vi­ous­ly had stores in Trinidad be­tween May 6, 1997 and Oc­to­ber 25, 2003, but closed due to low sales. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Ar­cos Do­ra­dos said that bit would open its first restau­rant in Trinidad, at one of the coun­try's most pop­u­lar shop­ping des­ti­na­tions, The Falls at West Mall. Based in Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na, Ar­cos Do­ra­dos is the largest op­er­a­tor of Mc­Don­ald's restau­rants in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, and the world's largest Mc­Don­ald's fran­chisee. Ar­cos Do­ra­dos op­er­ates 1,755 restau­rants, 1,300 dessert cen­ters and 267 Mc­Caf&ea­cute; lo­ca­tions in 19 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in Latin Amer­i­ca, serv­ing an av­er­age of four mil­lion cus­tomers dai­ly.

More than 20 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als have al­ready been hired as man­agers, and have been un­der­go­ing train­ing in Cu­ra­cao and Puer­to Ri­co over the past few months, in prepa­ra­tion for the new Mc­Don­ald's open­ing. The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly in the process of re­cruit­ing crew mem­bers for the Mc­Don­ald's restau­rant at The Falls at West Mall. Can­di­dates will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present their re­sumes on Mon­day and Tues­day, from 8.30 am to 4 pm, at the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel. "We are very hap­py to ar­rive in T&T, and very proud to be gen­er­at­ing new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties through the di­rect jobs at our new restau­rant", says Mi­la­gros Berm&ua­cute;dez, Ar­cos Do­ra­dos Mar­ket Man­ag­er for T&T. "We look for­ward to start serv­ing the Trin­bag­o­ni­ans soon, and of­fer­ing the Mc­Don­ald's com­plete fam­i­ly ex­pe­ri­ence at our mod­ern and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-con­scious restau­rant!"

Ar­cos Do­ra­dos has the ex­clu­sive right to own, op­er­ate and grant fran­chis­es of Mc­Don­ald's restau­rants in 19 Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Ar­genti­na, Aru­ba, Brazil, Chile, Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­raçao, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, Pe­ru, Puer­to Ri­co, St Croix, St Thomas, Uruguay and Venezuela. The com­pa­ny op­er­ates or fran­chis­es 1,755 Mc­Don­ald's-brand­ed restau­rants with over 80,000 em­ploy­ees serv­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000,000 cus­tomers a day. Ar­cos Do­ra­dos is trad­ed on the New York Stock Ex­change.