Currency Collapse Drives McDonald’s Out Of Iceland

REYKJAVIK, Iceland—Iceland has become the land of the $6 Big Mac, and that’s just too much.

All three McDonald’s restaurants in the island nation will close next weekend. The franchise owner says since the collapse of the nation’s currency, the krona, profits have plummeted and the enterprise has just become too expensive.

The company says McDonald’s requires that it import all goods for the restaurants from Germany. That includes everything from the packaging to the meat and cheese. With high import tariffs and the decline in the krona’s value, costs have doubled.

A Big Mac now sells for $5.29 in the capital, Reykjavik, but for the franchise owner to make a decent profit, it would have to charge 20 percent more, or $6.36. That would make the Icelandic version of the burger, the most expensive in the world.

So goodbye, Big Mac.

The Economist magazine’s 2009 Big Mac index says Switzerland and Norway currently have the world’s most expensive Big Macs at $5.75.

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