Peter and Nelly van Gelder ran not one but two McDonald’s restaurants in Eindhoven and Best for years. Both of them never expected that the fast food restaurant would play an important role in their lives. Peter is a cook and wanted to have his own restaurant. Nelly wanted her own ballet school, but it turned out to be baking hamburgers. After 37 years they call it a day. Sunday was their last day of work.
In 1986, Peter and Nelly opened their McDonald’s in the Woensel shopping center in Eindhoven. Seven years later, their second Mac followed next to the new A2 motorway in Best.
Peter worked in the Royal Navy. When he saw an ad from McDonald’s looking for franchisees, he immediately responded. “As a qualified chef, I always wanted to have my own restaurant. I didn’t expect this to become a McDonald’s.” Peter first received internal training and had to take courses to master entrepreneurship.
“I’ve never regretted it.”
Nelly, originally a dance teacher, occasionally helped her husband in the business and never left after that. “Opening my own ballet school turned into making hamburgers, but I’ve never regretted it.”
The McDonald’s in Best became their showpiece. “We wanted to run it, but also wanted to decorate the restaurant in our own way: completely in the style of the fifties. So complete with jukeboxes and cars from that time.”
Both the head office in the Netherlands and that in America had to approve this. “In the end, we got permission and we had the first McDonald’s in the Netherlands in the fifties diner style. Later we changed everything, with the very first McDonald’s in the United States as an example.”
For years, McDonald’s in Best was best known for its huge statue of Michael Jackson. “It was indeed an eye-catcher,” says Nelly. It gave us national and even international fame and we actually met Jackson. Four years ago, however, we had to decide to remove the statue.”
“It was a really fun time.”
A documentary had been broadcast in which two American men state that they were abused by the singer as children. With that, the meter-high statue had lost its innocence.
Yesterday was the last working day of the Van Gelder couple. Nelly beams: “It was a great time, with a lot of lovely colleagues and a lot of nice customers. We now have more time for our hobbies. Peter is a cameraman at Local Broadcasting Nuenen and likes to ride a motorcycle and I’m going to dance again. And we’re going to visit our son, who lives in London.”
Finally, that one burning question: what is their all time favorite in the McDonald’s range? “The Big Mac!” the couple shout in unison. It certainly won’t have been their last burger.