Four new McDonald's restaurants will open in wider Christchurch this year.

McDonald's will open four new restaurants in greater Christchurch this year, sparking concerns over the intensification of fast food in the city.

The fast food company is spending $20 million on the four stores, which will employ more than 150 people. Only one other McDonald's outlet would be built in New Zealand this year and that was in Auckland.

A restaurant would open on Ferry Rd, Woolston in August, followed by Yaldhurst Rd in November and at Ravenswood in Woodend in December. A fourth store was expected to open in December, but McDonald's would not confirm its location. They would all have drive-thru facilities and would be consented to open 24 hours a day seven days a week.

SUPPLIED An artist's impression of the Woolston McDonald's restaurant, included in the resource consent application.

The Woolston restaurant would be less than 500 metres from St Anne's Catholic School and little more than 700m from Te Waka Unua School.

Canterbury University associate professor of marketing Ekant Veer said he was concerned high concentrations of fast food outlets helped normalise the high calorie, low nutrient food on offer.

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"It normalises fast food as an every day food," he said.

Christchurch has 13 McDonald's restaurants and Waimakariri district has two, but by the end of the year the numbers would increase to 16 and three respectively. This would put greater Christchurch ahead of Auckland, Wellington and Rotorua in terms of the number of McDonald's outlets per capita. Christchurch has 10 Burger King and eight KFC restaurants.

McDonald's has come under fire in the past for building its restaurants in low socio-economic areas and close to schools, but McDonald's has described suggestions it deliberately built near schools as "misguided".

The Yaldhurst outlet was granted a resource consent late last year and would be built on the corner of Yaldhurst Rd and Sir John McKenzie Drive. It would form part of the Yaldhurst Village commercial area.

A McDonald's spokeswoman said the company chose Yaldhurst because it was a growth area of Christchurch and on a main arterial route.

"Canterbury is also one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, making it a natural choice for new restaurants."

Veer said there were already McDonald's restaurants nearby at the airport and in Hornby.

"It's already quite a densely-populated area when it comes to McDonald's. There's quite a few in that area."

Doctors, students, parents and principals pleaded with the Christchurch City Council in late 2016 to introduce a bylaw to prevent any more fast food outlets opening close to schools. The council said it was not able to use the district plan to regulate fast food outlets to manage the health-related effects of fast food.

In September last year, St Anne's School principal Dallas Wichman​ voiced his concerns about the restaurant being built in Woolston.

He said the school tried to teach pupils about the importance of a healthy diet, but the temptation of a McDonald's just down the road might prove too much.

Wichman was concerned students would forego spending their lunch money at school in favour of cheap items at the new fast food outlet before or after school.

There are 168 McDonald's in New Zealand and 35 in the South Island. Gore has the most per capita in the South Island because its restaurant services just 12,450 people.



