Iceland hit the headlines last week when it was announced that McDonald’s is leaving the country. It has been here since 1993 and the first BigMac was consumed by our former prime minister, David Oddsson. Instead of closing down the shop, they decided to open up a new burger joint called Metro. Apparently, they don’t use any imported ingredients.

The transition actually went smoothly. The week before they closed, they made the announcement that they were closing down McDonald’s and that they would instead rebrand the 3 locations under the name of Metro. A PR firm must have handled this, because it was covered by every media outlet in Iceland! So it’s fair to say that everybody knew about the new brand.

It has been open for 5 days and it looks like the rebranding was a success. I actually tried it today and me and my companions agreed that it looked, smelled and tasted just like McDonald’s! I didn’t think it was possible to take something like bacon burger at McDonald’s and imitate it almost to perfection with domestic ingredients, but obviously I was wrong.