Langford now has its third McDonald's restaurant.
Rona's spacious parking lot on the corner of Veteran's Memorial and Langford parkways now hosts Vancouver Island's newest McDonald's restaurant. The new location boasts 95 seats over 5,200 square feet, dual-lane drive throughs, Victoria's first self-serve kiosk at a McDonald's and more than 100 new, local jobs for the community.
"We have been eyeballing this side of Langford for a very long time, it is very underserved because there is huge growth in the West Shore," said owner Ken Taylor. "With Royal Bay coming on, West Hills, Bear Mountain activating again, the whole West Shore is alive and vibrant... This is the best opportunity right now that we see on the Island."
Taylor, a Colwood resident of six years, opens the fourth McDonald's on the West Shore, joining one inside the Walmart across the street, one on Millstream Road, on one on Island Highway in Colwood. He also owns one in Esquimalt and one in Sooke.
"We do a lot of market research and this site indexed extremely well, in fact it is as well an indexed site as McDonald's has ever seen," he said. "They call it the 1000 per cent store, taking into account traffic counts, population, (where people) work, live and shop - it is all in this zone. Everything that McDonald's looks at, all converge here."
The new locations is also the very first to carry their new line of bakery items including croissants, lemon loaf, strudels alongside an expanded coffee bar. The restaurants manager Rhonda Glowasky, a View Royal resident, brings 22 years of experience at McDonald's over from the Millstream location to help open the new restaurant. She said this location will be served by the community, for the community.
"We have hired more than 100 people from the community at this restaurant," she said. "That is one of the things we really want to do, we are very focused on local... It is critical."
alim@goldstreamgazette.com