Here comes the McAssault

Get ready, world: McDonald's is targeting you.

The U.S. fast food giant says it's opening 1,000 new restaurants next year. It will also renovate 2,300 more.

Here's the McBreakdown of new joints for 2010:

• 490 across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia
• 260 for Europe
• 150 in the U.S.
• 80 for Latin America
• 20 in Canada

The business rationale?

"Today's market conditions have accentuated our strengths," said McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner said. "The time is ideal for us to further differentiate our brand and grow market share. We are determined to keep stretching our business, increasing traffic and becoming more relevant to a growing number of customers around the world."

McDonald's is one of those great science lab companies of globalization — an icon that tries to adapt its business model and menu to local tastes, while keeping it all under the same umbrella. Sometimes it works (especially in a global recession, where people are spending less on food). Sometimes it doesn't.

But as recent GlobalPost coverage shows, it's always fun to watch — from what the company is doing to attract Moroccan taste buds, to how it's fending off a new competitor in Indonesia, to changing the culinary traditions of France.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/commerce/091112/here-comes-the-mcassault