To Russia With Fries - Tapa dura

ink that an autobiography by the senior chairman of McDonald’s in Canada and Russia would be a modestly boastful, ho-hum business story of expansion and board-room debates, wrapped in some nice reminiscences about his family. You would be very wrong. Because this is George Cohon’s autobiography, and George Cohon (“Call me George, please!”) is not an ordinary man...not in his approach to business and not in his approach to telling his life story.

It’s true that George Cohon is one of the most successful businessmen of his generation and that he’s also one of the most colourful. But the man you’ll meet in the pages of To Russia With Fries is considerably more complex than that description suggests. Here, you’ll encounter a man who not only dreamed the impossible dream of opening a McDonald’s restaurant in the heart of the Soviet Union (of all places), but had the patience, the persistence, and above all the good humour t

George Cohon, senior chairman and chairman of the executive committee of McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada and senior chairman of McDonald’s Russia, was born in Chicago and emigrated to Canada in 1967 with his wife and their two young sons. He came to build McDonald’s in Eastern Canada, and he ended up opening more than a thousand restaurants across the country – and thirty more in the former Soviet Union.

An Officer of the Order of Canada, Cohon has also received the Israel Prime Minister’s Medal (Israel’s highest public service award) and the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews Human Relations Award, among many other awards for his work on behalf of charity. He is also the founding patron of Ronald McDonald Houses and is founder of Ronald McDonald Children’