Peterborough McDonald’s restaurants to reopen for walk-in takeaways later this month

The fast food chain made the decision at the start of the third lockdown that it would close its restaurants to walk-ins and only offer drive-thru and delivery services, partnering with Uber East and Just Eat to do so.

At the time, it was said that the decision was taken to allow time to review extra safety measures to protect customers and staff. Now though, the chain is committing to opening 26 restaurants in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from Wednesday (February 11) on a trial basis before looking to reopen all of its branches for walk-in takeaways from February 22.

The list of the 26 restaurants taking part in the trial is not yet known.

Increased safety measures will be put in place to allow this to happen, these include: enlarged sanitising stations, spare face covering for visitors without, visors and face covering for all customer-facing employees, additional restrictions on the number of customers and couriers allowed inside, a revised process for couriers to support safe working and an enhanced process for managing the flow of people, employees and couriers inside.

A statement from McDonalds said: “Last month, we voluntarily decided to pause walk-in takeaway services in all our restaurants whilst we reviewed our safety measures. Throughout the pandemic, we have been clear that the safety and wellbeing of our people and customers remains our top priority.

Over the past four weeks, we’ve worked with third-party safety experts NSF International, our restaurant teams and franchises to review all of the safety and operational processes in place in our restaurants.

“During this review, we identified the additional changes we could make to further enhance our safety procedures.

“We kindly ask you all to keep playing your part as we bring more of our restaurant options back to your community.“