FAST FOOD CHAIN McDonalds has distanced itself from a soon-to-launch Dublin service which says it will offer a weekend delivery service for fans of the restaurants.

A Facebook page for the ‘Mc Donalds Delivery Dublin’ service was set up on Facebook on Monday – and had already accumulated over 6,000 fans by this afternoon, ahead of a launch next weekend.

The service said it would offer home deliveries of McDonalds food between 6pm and 6am on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – and its creators had insisted that it was a legitimate business, with their Facebook page complete with McDonald’s branding.

This afternoon, however, McDonalds spokesman Ray Farrelly told TheJournal.ie that the service was “absolutely not” an official McDonald’s operation, underlining that home deliveries were “not something that we do at all”.

“These guys have set themselves up as a private enterprise – it’s not something we condone because it’s up to our customers to choose,” he said.

“There’s not a huge lot we can do, but they definitely don’t have anything to do with us.”

This afternoon the Facebook page had its ‘golden arches’ branding removed, and previous declarations that the business was affiliated to the fast food chain had been removed.

Its administrators disclosed that they “have absolutely no association with McDonalds whatsoever and do not claim to, nor wish to represent, McDonalds in any form”, and that their service was merely a delivery and concierge offering for people who wanted food bought and delivered on their behalf.

Farrelly said that while McDonalds did offer home deliveries in some Asian countries such as Singapore, this was only viable in city-state environments were distribution times were not too long.

“From our perspective we wouldn’t be comfortable doing it because we couldn’t stand over the quality of the food,” he said. “Anything over ten to 15 minutes and we couldn’t guarantee the quality or the temperature of the product.”

The delivery service asserted, however, that its delivery vehicles would be fully equipped with “the necessary catering fixtures to ensure food arrives hot, and drinks arrive chilled”.

The service will begin operations on Friday 6 May, delivering to Dublin 4, 6, 6w, 14, 16 and 18.

Would you order from a McDonald’s delivery service?