McDonald's reveals plans to open Northampton restaurants again this month

Northampton's McDonald's restaurants could reopen on February 22 for walk-in take away services if a national in-house trial is successful.

The company made the voluntary decision to close its walk-in takeaway services about a month ago but has since reviewed its safety measures to 'reflect the evolving nature of the Covid-19 pandemic'.

The fast-food firm said it is currently rolling out these new safety measures across its restaurants.

Paul Pomroy, McDonald’s CEO UK and Ireland said: "A month ago we made the voluntary decision to temporarily close walk-in takeaway while we reviewed our safety measures to ensure they reflect the evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Working closely with third party safety expert NSF International, we identified a small number of changes to further enhance our procedures, and we are currently in the process of rolling these out to restaurants.

"This week, a small number of our restaurants will trial reopening walk-in takeaway with these enhancements in place, with the plan to reopen the majority of restaurants for walk-in takeaway across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland from Monday February 22."

The CEO said new safety measures being introduced include visors as well as face coverings for customer facing employees, revised guidance and processes for couriers to support their safe working and enhanced processes for managing customer and courier flow in restaurants.

Mr Pomroy added: "Once again, we would like to thank our franchisees, managers and employees for their ongoing commitment in supporting and implementing all of our updated procedures.

"The well-being of our people, as well as our suppliers, couriers and our customers remains our top priority, and we are confident the new processes in place will further enhance our already robust safety measures."