Day 257 - 06 Jun 96 - Page 40


     
     1        transactions but we cannot break down the number of people,
     2        it is very hard to make an assumption based upon product
     3        mix, upon what people are buying, which is why we use an
     4        external research source like AF2 or, indeed, the trading
     5        area survey that I referred to.  So we do not actually use
     6        the product mix information to get to that calculation, it
     7        is too unreliable because one person could buy 2 Big Macs
     8        and another person could but one, you cannot really base an
     9        assumption based on that.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL: How confident are you about the 2.5 or 2.7?
    12        A.  Very confident.  I have two independent research
    13        sources that confirm it.  I am not quite sure what the
    14        latest number is, but certainly its number has been moving
    15        from between 2.35 and about 3 for over the last 2 or 3
    16        years.  It varies from time of year and the time periods to
    17        time period, but that is certainly a constant within our
    18        data.
    19
    20   MS. STEEL:   Therefore, you can be very confident of the 650
    21        million figure?
    22        A.  Yes, yes.
    23
    24   Q.   Right.
    25        A.  We cannot say it is people, we can say it is the
    26        equivalent of 650 customer or pairs of feet coming through
    27        the doors of McDonald's UK restaurants in a year because it
    28        is a calculation based on, you know, an average and an
    29        actual number.  It is not 2 actual numbers, if you know
    30        what I mean.
    31
    32   MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, I can see, for instance, let us suppose
    33        you have a particular heavy user who accounts for a lot of
    34        customer visit in a year, he might be someone who comes in
    35        every day for his breakfast or every day for his lunch.
    36        A.  Yes.
    37
    38   Q.   Comes in on his own because that is his working day?
    39        A.  That is correct, yes.
    40
    41   Q.   He is not 2.5 people nor is he 2.7, he is just one but he
    42        is accounting for an abnormal proportion of the actual
    43        visits?
    44        A.  Yes, indeed, and the corollary of that is that fairly
    45        high percentages for the business in our restaurants is
    46        birthday parties and, again, one transaction you may have
    47        15 people.
    48
    49   Q.   That is the counterbalance?
    50        A.  That is the counterbalance, yes. 
    51 
    52   MS. STEEL:  You would know how many people there were for a 
    53        birthday party because the person who is actually paying
    54        has to pay for the number of people that there are in the
    55        group do they not?
    56        A.  Yes, I think actually somewhere in the system we would
    57        track it but we certainly used to.  I am not familiar with
    58        the current number, but it used to be something like ten to
    59        12 people per birthday party a couple of years ago.
    60

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