McDonald's Holding Co. Japan Ltd., a unit of the world's biggest restaurant chain, said about 1,000 people were hired to patronize one of its outlets, inflating sales when a new hamburger was recently introduced.
The restaurant in Osaka had a daily sales record of about ¥10 million on Tuesday when it introduced the Quarter Pounder to its menu. About 1,000 of 15,000 customers on the day were hired by a market research company on behalf of McDonald's.
"We didn't know that some of the customers that lined up to buy the new burger on that day had been paid," McDonald's Japan spokesman Kenji Kaniya said by telephone Friday.
Japanese media reported earlier this week that some of the customers lined up all night ahead of the introduction of the Quarter Pounder to the Kansai region.