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
