McDonald's only McSki restaurant with Ski-Thru in Sweden: photos
Thanks for signing up!
Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go.
In the US it's easy to get a Big Mac delivered to your house or order one at the drive-thru, but one restaurant in Sweden lets you ski off with your meal.
McDonald's has just one restaurant with a so-called Ski-Thru, located at the Lindvallen ski resort in Sälen, Sweden.
The McSki restaurant, as it's also known, opened in 1996 and feeds hungry skiers throughout the winter.
It's only open during the ski season
It's open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the peak of the ski season and closes in the summer. It doesn't offer delivery, but you can get food either to eat in — including table service, which is widespread at McDonald's Swedish restaurants — or to ski away with from its famous hatch.
The busiest times are from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Omar Dabous, the operations manager of the franchisee organization that owns the restaurant, told Business Insider.
It's located in a massive Swedish ski resort
Sälen is one of Sweden's biggest ski resorts. It's split into four different areas, of which Lindvallen is the biggest.
It's located next to the country's border with Norway and is served by the Scandinavian Mountains Airport, which has seasonal direct flights to the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, and other places in Sweden.
McDonald's has about 200 restaurants in Sweden, with 400,000 customers daily, per its website. In Sweden, its nicknamed Donken.
Skiers can stop off there for a hot chocolate and Big Mac
The most popular menu items at the McSki are hot chocolates and Big Macs, Dabous said.
McDonald's Sweden's menu includes many familiar items like McNuggets, the Filet-o-Fish, McFlurrys, and milkshakes.
But there are also some McDonald's menu items US diners might not recognize, like hot wings, McToasts, and a vegetarian burger with sour cream and chive sauce. It has a range of gluten-free burgers, too. It's unclear which items specifically are available at the site in Lindvallen.
In 2022, the restaurant added McCafé drinks to its menu, as well as cakes, doughnuts, cookies, and macarons in various flavors.
The restaurant has views of the slopes
The Telegraph's Richard Orange who recently visited the restaurant said its decor mimics a Swedish hunting lodge, with a cowbell hanging from a pillar in the center.
Photos uploaded by reviewers on Google show wooden paneling on the walls and ceiling and rows of long tables and benches. The photos also show the restaurant adorned with framed artwork of animals, such as a bird, fox, and moose.
Large windows mean that customers can have views of the surrounding slopes and trees.
There are racks outside the restaurant for diners to store their skis, too.
Service can be slow, but visiting the world's only McSki is a 'must'
"It's a very special McDonald's," Aron Johannes, the restaurant's supervisor, told The Telegraph's Orange. "Everyone is happy, everyone is on vacation mode."
One video uploaded in December by TikToker Irene de Wit, showing her snowboarding up to the order hatch to collect a burger, has 7.6 million views.
The restaurant has close to 750 reviews on Google, with an average star rating of 3.5.
"Extremely busy, very slow," one reviewer wrote. Other comments similarly described the service as slow and said that collecting orders was "chaotic"
Some reviewers also criticized the quality of the food.
But people praised the restaurant's uniqueness, with one reviewer describing it as a "must" for McDonald's fans. People said that the service was generally much quicker during the evenings and pointed out that the food is made fresh to order, too.
"Knocking a star off for cooking everything to order while you freeze your bits off outside," one person wrote.
Are you a McDonald's superfan? Email this reporter at [email protected].
Read next
McDonald's Retail
