As elsewhere in the world, Fast Food is popular in Finland and there are any number of fast food outlets. But on the whole, Fast Food in Finland is dominated by half a dozen large chains along with some up and coming contenders. Kotipizza is the largest, with the Hamburger chains, Hesburger (operating around 270 outlets across Finland), Rolls (with just on 100 outlets), McDonalds (which came to Finland in 1984 and has around 80 outlets) and Subway following closely. Snacky, another Finnish burger chain, is an up and coming contender. In June 2013, Finnish restaurant and hotel consortium, Restel, owner of 49 hotels and 240 restaurants in Finland, announced that they had signed a comprehensive deal to establish the Burger King franchise on Finnish turf, with the first Burger King outlet planned to open in late 2013.

Other smaller Fast Food chains are Sibylla, Arnolds, Rax (owned by Restel), Scanburger, and the tiny (3 outlets) Southern Fried Chicken which I include only because there’s no KFC in Finland.

Aside from the chain outlets, there are quite a few Gourmet Burger outlets scatted around, along with a large number of smaller kiosks and grills. There are also quite a number of restaurant (as opposed to fast food) chains such as Amarillo’s, Chicos and the like which I’ll cover in a separate Post.  They’re mostly pretty much what you’d expect. But in this Post, we’re covering the fast food chains only. So, without further ado, here we go….

Fast Food in Finland – Arnolds

Arnolds is Finland’s first bakery & coffee shop chain with American style fast service. The first coffee shop opened in 1991 and there are around 30 Arnolds coffee shops scattered across Finland today. All the coffee shops are located in the city centers or in malls. Arnolds originated with a couple of hotel and restaurant business students studying in Switzerland who founded Oy Hermen Ab (Hermen Ltd) in 1991 and who then bought the rights to the brand name Arnolds Donuts and its products from Unilever Finland Oy Paasivaara. The first Arnolds Donuts Coffee Shop opened in the Hansa Shopping Center in Turku in October 1991.With over thirty coffee shops around Finland, Arnolds continues to expand.

Bagels, Toasted sandwiches, Donuts, Cream and Jam Pastries, Muffins, Cinnamon Rolls, Frozen Yogurt, Smoothies and Fruities, Coffee and other Beverages. Arnolds is basically a North-American style coffee shop with a Finnish flavor. For visiting North Americans, the Bagel selection is good and includes a Reindeer Bagel, using cold smoked reindeer. Good for a quick breakfast, a light lunch, or a coffee and donut fix.

Arnold’s aren’t bad at marketing either – for Valentines Day 2012, Arnold’s came up with these pink boxes with some sort of Japanese animé-looking characters on them. Your donuts went in the pink box and you also got a sheet of stickers. Cute!

Fast Food in Finland – 55 Fifty Five Burger, Cola, Fries

55 Fifty Five Burger, Cola, Fries is a recent arrival in the Finnish fast-food market. They’re owned by the very successful Finnish-owned Kotipizza Corporation and their stated goal is to reach third place in the Finnish hamburger market and branch out internationally “on a tight schedule.” With Kotipizza providing the financial footing, the Fifty Five chain is expanding rapidly in Finland. Their aim is to “return to the roots of the Hamburger experience when American cars were classic, rock ‘n’ roll was fresh, burgers were first arriving as fast-food and life in general had more flavor”.

Fifty Five offers a small and original selection of 7 Hamburgers – Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Doublecheese, Chickenburger, Doubleburger and for those who want extra meat, the Baconburger and their flagship burger, the Flamesburger.  Extras consist of extra beef, extra cheese, drinks, Fries and a selection of four different dips. Fifty Five really is Burgers pared back down to the original concept without all the add-ons. Reviews, such as they are given this is a relatively new entrant on the market, are somewhat mixed but on the whole positive. Seems like a good place for a Burger if you run into one about the time you’re hungry.

 

Fast Food in Finland – Hesburger

Hesburger (commonly known in Finland as Hese) is the largest Finnish hamburger/fast-food restaurant chain (in Finland, they’re larger than McDonald’s). Hesburger is based in Turku and dates back to 1966, when Heikki Salmela (born 1946) opened a street food kiosk in Naantali. He opened the first Hesburger in 1980 in Turku and by 1992 there were 12 outlets. Currently there are over 260 restaurants in 60 towns across Finland. They have also expanded internationally – as well as Finland, you’ll now find Hesburger in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine. The company name comes from the nickname of the founder, Heikki “Hese” Salmela. There is also a Hesburger Hotel located in Turku, with a 24 hour Hesburger restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel, which is also doubles as the hotel reception when checking in.

Hesburger sell hamburgers, cheeseburgers, salads, french fries, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts. They also have kebab restaurants (offering a kebab menu in addition to the normal menu) and pasta restaurants (which offer a pasta menu in addition to the normal menu), Hesecafes (which sell pastries and specialty coffees), hot dog outlets, and restaurants which also offer carwash services to their customers.

Like any successful hamburger chain, Hesburger guarantees a consistent product with first-class customer service, clean and cosy restaurants and a pleasant experience. The menu largely consists of standard Burgers – Double, Cheese, Bacon,Chicken, Fish, etc, with a few variations such as Falafel Burgers and Gluten-free Hamburgers. They do meal packages and serve all the standards – French Fries, Salads, Icecream, Milkshakes, Drinks and pastries. If you ask native Finns where to get that “Finnish hamburger experience”, odds are they’ll suggest Hesburger. You’ll find the staff generally consist of young women who will casually defeat any attempt on your part to speak Finnish by responding in English – which makes it pretty easy to order. The décor is very Finnish-Scandinavian, with wood tables and chairs and the food quality and service is a step up from McDonald’s – the prices are a little more expensive too but for all that, Hesburger is pretty popular.

You’ll notice a few differences with the food and the packaging as well. Drinks come in containers that fit perfectly inside the bottom of the bag. There flagship megahamburger is wider than a Big Mac and includes lettuce, mayonnaise, pickles, tomatoes, and cheese which are good quality – although to North Americans the beef patties may be a bit bland. Also note that Hesburger fries are not salted by default – you get salt along with your ketchup, and you apply it yourself – other than that the fries are pretty much identical to McDonald’s fries.

Hesburger is so popular with Finns that they have a frequent-eater program called bonusklubi with airline-style levels of silver, gold, and platinum. Hesburger has also incorporated traditional Finnish food into its menu by offering something called a ruisfilehampurilainen, which is a fish sandwich made with traditional dark rye bread and topped with onion rings. Overall, Hesburger has certainly succeeded in meeting the expectations of Finland’s burger eaters, and the quality of service is excellent.

Hesburger restaurants and outlets can be found all over Finland. If you’re in need of a Burger fix, or the kids want fast food, you can’t go wrong eating here. And when in Finland……why eat McDonald’s?

Fast Food in Finland – Koti Pizza

Koti Pizza Oyj is the largest pizza restaurant chain in the Nordic countries and has its head office in Vaasa, Finland. Kotipizza was founded in 1987 by Rabbe Grönblom. By 2013, the Kotipizza chain had almost 300 restaurants across Finland. Some Kotipizza restaurants are located in conjunction with service stations. In addition to Finland, Kotipizza restaurants are found in Saint Petersburg (Russia), Estonia, in China (in Suzhou, near Shanghai) and expansion into Sweden has now begun. As one would expect, the menu consists largely of Pizza, with a considerable range available. Most interesting to visitors will be the “Berlusconi” pizza, made with smoked reindeer. Salads are also sold. Kotipizza does concentrate rather singlemindedly on pizzas however, you won’t find the mixed range of offerings that characterizes some fast food chains in Finland.

They are also competitive internationally – in 2010, Kotipizza’s Cold Smoked Salmon Kotzone won bronze at The America’s Plate International Pizza Competition held in New York. The winner was Italy, while the host country United States ranked second. Finnish Cold Smoked Salmon Kotzone was garnished by red onion, salad, fresh spinach, tomato and cheese. The folded pizza was juiced up with lemon and honey sauce and balsamic vinegar.

All of that aside, Kotipizza are certainly popular within Finland for a reason. While their pizza’s are a bit different from the standard italian Pizza, they have a lot of ingredients to choose from and they offer extras such as high-fibre or gluten-free dough and you”ll always get a Xylitol-Chewinggum for cleaning your teeth afterwards. Kotipizza use a lighter pizza base with a thinner crust (no pan or deep dish pizzas) with less cheese and more toppings. The topping combinations are a little strange to North Americans but you’ll be in for a treat if you’re a bit adventurous with your food. They’re also consistent across all their outlets, so you’ll get no surprises, welcome or unwelcome.

Fast Food in Finland – McDonalds

McDonalds needs no introduction. They’re more or less the same everywhere in the world so I’m not going to bother talking much about them. That said, they’re one of the bigger fast food chains in Finland with 88 outlets and like Hesburger, you’ll find them everywhere. The first McDonalds opened in Finland in the city of Tampere in 1984 and expansion has been steady. Rovaniemi in Lapland is also home to the world’s most northern branch of McDonald’s.

 

Fast Food in Finland – Rax

Rax is a buffet chain that opened its first “Eat and drink as much as you want” buffet restaurant in 1994. Today, 26 Rax buffet restaurants are found at nineteen different locations. The chain is owned by Rax Restaurants Ltd, which is part of the Restel Group ( www.restel.fi ), a Finnish restaurant and hotel consortium. All 26 Rax Buffett are located in city centres or in large shopping centers, so they are easy to find (you can find Rax Buffet restaurant locations on the map at www.restel.fi / compass). Rax Buffet restaurants are generally open 360 days a year, closing only for St Johns Eve, Midsummer’s Day and Christmas (from the 24^th to the 26^th).  Where located in shopping centers, the restaurants comply with the centre opening hours, so you might want to check directly with the restaurant. Some locations have play areas for the kids.

Rax is not so much fast food as a chain of buffet restaurants, but they’re popular and easy to find in all the main Finnish city centres – and are generally included in any survey of  Finnish fast food so I’ve included them for that reason. The centre of their buffet’s are pizza, but in addition to pizza the buffet’s include soup, chicken wings, lasagna, meatballs, small sausages, creamy potatoes, onion rings, nachos and a wide variety of buffet salads. Drinks served as part of the buffet include Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola light, Fanta, Sprite, soda, coffee, milk and water. There is an extra charge for ice-cream, but again, its all-you-can-eat icecream. Beer you buy by the bottle. At €9.95 per adult and children over 11, Rax is also very reasonably priced (Children between 1 and 4 are €2.50, from 5 to 10 are €6.95) and in Helsinki in particular, that’s hard to beat.

By default, there’s a range of pizza’s at the buffet, almost all ingredients are lactose-freeand gluten-free is available. You can also order custom-made Pizza’s, these take a bit longer to make it to your table. The service is fast and easy – you pay at the entrance, the cashier presents you with bowls, plates and two disposable cups,you proceed to a table and then help yourself.  Rax is a popular chain. Reviews are pretty much unanimous that it’s clean, good and cheap as long as you like standard fast-food pizza – you get what you pay for and its good value for money seems to be the consensus.

Fast Food in Finland – Rolls & Rolls Express

 

Rolls & Rolls Express is a privately-owned chain of Finnish hamburger fast food restaurants and for a long time were found only in smaller Finnish towns with no other burger chain. Founded in 1988, the company has around one hundred Rolls & Rolls Express restaurants throughout the country and continues to expand. In 2002, Rolls started up Rolls Express, which are basically small Rolls outlets in gas and service stations.Their signature offerings are the PaPa, MaMa and Baby Meals, along with a range of different types of Burger and Fries combos (including Cheese, Bacon, Chicken & Fish burgers). They also serve a various types of Rolls, Wraps, Salads, Chicken Nuggets and French Fries along with an Apple Pie dessert. Rolls promote themselves as making their Burgers from high quality ingredients, favouring domestic Finnish suppliers and providing a tasty product at fair value for money.

Translated, that means they offer the same standard fast food burgers and meal combos as any other Burger chain along with all the standard offerings you expect. The MaMa is their equivalent of the Big Mac, with a triple decker bun, two meat patties, a slice of cheese, sauce and the usual condiments (lettuce, onion, pickle and ketchup). The bun is you standard soft burger bun with sesame seeds. The meat pattie is pretty much identical to Hesburger’s or McDonalds. Rolls don’t really offer anything that makes them special, they’re a smaller burger chain that offers a good reliable standard burger. You’ll find Rolls more easily in southern Finland, but they are scattered through the rest of the country and if you’re travelling, or you need a quick meal and you run across one, they’re pretty good.

Fast Food in Finland – ScanBurger

ScanBurger opened their first outlets in Oulu and Rovaniemi in 1996. In 2013, with more than 100 restaurants and outlets, Scanburger is now the third-largest hamburger chain in Finland and market themselves on quality, taste and large servings. Scanburger offers a large range of burgers and selected outlets offer further “speciality” burgers and kebabs. Actually, there big difference from other fast food chains in Finland is that their menu’s have a wider selection of burgers and other meals. Reviews on Scanburger are mixed but the general theme is that the burgers are large and the restaurant décor is stylish. Service however seems to be a bit of a mixed bag.

 

Fast Food in Finland – Snacky

Snacky drive-through burger bars first appeared in Finland in 1980 when they were a favourite national brand, often to be found next to petrol filling stations. The name disappeared in 1995 when the group was swallowed up by a larger food chain, but due to popular demand, Snacky is making a come-back. Renowned for the pure size of the meals and the distinctive taste of Finnish barbeque food, the traditional Snacky brand has been purchased back from Helsinki Burger Bakers Ltd and re-launched by chief executive officer Jukka Nieminen from Snacky’s headquarters in Espoo near Helsinki.

In Finland, Snacky has a bit of a reputation for its marketing. The drive-in Snacky’s grill in Espoo runs its own drive-in movie events, as well as its “The Police Are Your Friend Day” events (celebrating the police via Snacky’s well-know burgers, the Poliisi and the Iso Poliisi) and various summer gatherings of classic American cars. Snacky’s marketing slogans are in a bit of a class of their own, including spots on YouTube. Snacky’s advertising posters are popular enough to have been stolen by fans of the chain.

The Snacky menu offers up 12 different burgers, which you can also get as a meal with French Fries and a drink. The burgers are fairly large and Snackys makes their French Fries a bit chunkier than the other chains, whilst also including less fat. As well as vegetarian and gluten-freeoptions, they also do Fish & Chips and Sausage & Potatoes– and their sauces aren’t too bad either. Snacky’s CEO, Jukka Nieminen, says that “Traditionally grilled foods and larger portions are the key to our success.” All in all, they’re an innovative Finnish chain with some good marketing and Snacky’s continues to expand, even with the fierce competition that exists within the Finnish fast food market.

Reviews for Snacky’s are generally pretty good and they certainly have their Finnish fans. And I do like their marketing. Some of their posters and news releases are great!

Fast Food in Finland – Southern Fried Chicken

Southern Fried Chicken in Finland is a franchise of the British Southern Fried Chicken Steamboat company founded by Arthur Withers, now with some 700 outlets spread across 70 countries (although this is difficult to verify).  In the 1970s Withers travelled to America to work in Barbeque King; there, he improved his knowledge of the commercial fast food business and at the same time discovered southern-american style fried chicken, a concept that he picked up and turned into Southern Fried Chicken, which was founded in 1983. The company is currently headed by his son, Andrew Withers.

SFC are pretty small in Finland – only 3 outlets in Helsinki as far as I can make out, but I’ve included them as if you are in Helsinki and looking for KFC (which doesn’t have any operations in Finland – I believe the nearest KFC is in St Petersburg in Russia) they may be a fallback solution to any cravings you may have for KFC. As well as Fried Chicken, SFC serves Pizza, Burgers, Salad and at lunchtime it seems one SFC restaurant does an “all you can eat” pizza buffet (note that from reviewers comments, it seems water to drink is not included in the price of the buffet).

Reviews on the buffet are generally pretty good, for non-buffet fast food they seem a bit mixed. One reviewer commented that SFC was a mix of KFC, a typical kebab joint and a burger chain, all under one roof, and that the burgers were pretty standard “out of the freezer” burgers. Typical fast food chain in other words. Aside from that, it’s a UK-spinoff of US fried chicken and personally, I’ve never found British fast food to be that great. There’s no website for SFC in Finland and no info on SFC Finland on the UK website for Southern Fried Chicken other than some addresses for  Finnish outlets, so all of this was pieced together from various review sites and forums. As a result, it’s a bit subjective, so it’s “try and see.”

Fast Food in Finland – Subway®

Subway® is a US fast food chain that opened its first outlet in 1965 and which is well-known internationally. Subway® Suomi (Finland) opened its first Finnish outlet in July 2000 and growth has been rapid – in December 2012 there were 105 Subway outlets in Finland, with plans for 200 in Finland by 2017. In 2012 a survey of fast-food and coffee chains in Finland by Taloustutkimus gave SUBWAY® restaurants the best overall ratings.  For visitors to Finland, Subway should need no description – their Subs are standard internationally with a few Finnish variations and they’re popular for a reason.

 

Fast Food in Finland – Sibylla

Sibylla is a chain of fast food restaurants  throughout Sweden and Finland, where they mostly hold the concessions for service station food serveries. Starting in 1907 selling sausages in Sweden, Sibylla began selling hot dogs in 1932. Sibylla steadily expanded their menu to include a wide variety of sausages, hot dogs, hamburgers, and now an expanded range of fast food. In 1997 there were 200 Sibylla restaurants in Sweden, in 2013 there were over 3,500 spread across Europe.

In Finland, Sibylla’s growth in recent years has been exponential. Sibylla arrived in Finland for the first time in 1997 and has proved increasingly popular. By the spring of 2013 Sibylla had 280 outlets throughout Finland. One of the reasons for Sibylla’s rapid success is that menu items are designed for the Finnish market and for Finnish tastes. In Finland, Sibylla’s main menu items are sausages or hot dogs and hamburgers, but the range is constantly growing with other items added as demand increases. At the moment, Finnish customers eat 160,000 Sibylla hot dogs per month.

Sibylla really is fast food. Their outlets are mostly kiosks in malls and service station concessions. For basic sausages, hot dogs and burgers, they’re apparently pretty good. They’re  certainly popular! So is Fast Food in Finland! Enjoy!

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