Tired of London, Tired of Life - A website about things to do in London

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18 March 2009

Visit the UK's First McDonalds

Certainly not worth a trip on its own, but an interesting piece of trivia, the UK's first McDonalds was opened in Woolwich in 1974, and is still going strong at 56/58 Powis Street, Woolwich, SE18 6LQ.


When the store opened, a hamburger apparently cost 18p, the Big Mac was called the Big Boy and burgers were made to an almost identical formula to what you can now find in around 1,000 stores on every high street in Britain. A UK Head Office was promptly established at Hampstead and we followed world powers such as Japan, Australia, Panama and Guam into being a fast food society.

Interesting to reflect that fast food has had such a relatively brief history in the UK. Hopefully the rest of our culinary experience has moved on further than McDonalds...

If you are so inclined you can read more about the history of McDonalds at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/eaten-with-relish-743695.html.

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^Picture from flickr courtesy of VirtualErn^

4 comments:

  1. Wow, good fact. Any idea why they picked Woolwich, rather than, say, Oxford Street?

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  2. I just want to apologize for us yanks for spreading the McDonalds disease, nice piece of history but still kinda saddened that american obesity made its way to europe...bright side english culinary is not defined by McDonalds, thank the heavens!

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  3. ive been there. Its fantastic. Nice staff

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  4. I believe that one of the founders was an Indian born Londoner named Mr Grover, whom I met in '06.

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