New book tells the 35-year history of McDonald’s in New Zealand.

McDonald’s New Zealand founder Hugh Morris died last Thursday after a long battle with ill health, the company announced today.

Mr Morris set up the company in New Zealand with the help of his brother Wally Morris as well as Gary Lloydd, Ray Stonelake and Lionel Whitehead.

On June 7 1976 the fast food chain opened its doors for the first time in New Zealand, with the country’s first ever Big Mac being served at McDonald’s Porirua.

The company now has 150 restaurants and more than 9000 employees around the country.

New Zealand’s major food companies are run by evil goblins who sit in their offices counting piles of cash while selling us dodgy, over-priced food they’ve deliberately changed the flavour of to ruin our childhood memories.

Well, maybe not, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that if you had been following some of the recent media coverage of the companies that supply most of the food we put on our tables.

Over the past few months New Zealand’s intrepid media have uncovered some shocking scandals in the food industry:

McDonald’s will reach a milestone today when it opens its 150th restaurant in New Zealand, the first of 10 new restaurants to be opened in 2010.

Richmond, Nelson, will get the 150th restaurant as part of McDonald’s three-year $100 million capital investment programme into the New Zealand market, announced in 2009.

It will take the total to 32 restaurants in the South Island with 118 in the North Island.

McDonald’s has etched its name into the Guinness World Records ™ this morning with a breakfast fry-up like no other.

The company cooked a massive meal of scrambled eggs that weighed in at 1.24 metric tonnes, breaking the previous world record of one metric tonne by more than 200kg.

In order to break the world record McDonald’s had to use more than 20,000 eggs and 100 litres of cream, cooked on a specially made dish that measured more than five metres across.