Forty years ago the world-famous Big Mac hit the UK streets and it all started in Woolwich. Carly Read reports.

The most famous fast-food franchise came to London during a decade of traumatic economical change – docks and factories closed causing a landscape of decay across the capital and unemployment was rising.

Suddenly, a small ‘staff wanted’ advert appeared in a local newspaper for a new fast-food restaurant soon to open in Woolwich.

Who would have known the opening of the UK’s first McDonald’s in Powis Street would change the way people dine out forever.

Kathryn Gale, 58, of Brands Hatch Way, Dartford, remembers the McDonald’s grand opening on October 12, 1974 as the most exciting thing to happen to Woolwich.

Ms Gale said: “I was 18 at the time and doing a management training course at M&S and McDonald’s gave all the local employees a voucher for a free hamburger because they wanted the restaurant to look busy at lunch time.”

“It was really quite a big thing across the whole country.”

She added: “I remember taking a bite and thinking the burger tasted so much better than Wimpy’s, which was all we had at the time, so I loved the McDonald’s burgers.”

After the restaurant’s first day of service a month later, the most popular menu item in the 70s was the All Star Meal – a hamburger, fries and soft drink at a price of just 48p.

A Big Mac was priced at 89p and milkshakes cost fraction of today’s price at 46p.

Ms Gale said: “Back then they were quite expensive and were really more of a treat – which probably sounds a bit odd now.”

A 46-year-old Paul Preston, from Ohio, was hired to drive the “UK launch pad” to success and the Woolwich restaurant subsequently became so popular that just one month later, boxer Henry Cooper launched his autobiography from there.

A spokesman from the McDonald’s Woolwich restaurant said: “We have been on a quite a journey since we first opened our doors in Woolwich in 1974. McDonald’s now has over 1,200 restaurants in the UK and it fills me with pride to be the franchisee of the very first.

“As part of our 40th anniversary celebrations we also commissioned a report to look at the economic contribution that McDonald’s makes through our restaurants and supply chain, and for Borough of Greenwich this means £11 million a year added to the local economy. I’m committed to investing in Woolwich and I hope customers will continue to enjoy the changes and advances we make over the coming years.”

Fast forward forty years and memories of a bleak and grey 1970s – the IRA bombing campaign, the Great Drought and Bloody Sunday – are made a little brighter with the arrival of those big yellow arches in an ordinary industrial town.

Ten weird and wonderful McDonald’s facts:

  • McDonald’s first menu items were hot dogs, not hamburgers
  • The fast food giant opens a new restaurant every 14.5 hours
  • More than 80,000 people have graduated from McDonald’s Hamburger University in Chicago with a degree in Hamburgerology
  • Thanks to the Happy Meal, McDonald’s is the world’s largest distributor of toys
  • It takes the average McDonald’s employee seven months to earn what a McDonald’s CEO makes in an hour
  • McDonald’s used to sell pizza in the 70s
  • Drive-thru staff will not serve people if they come on horseback
  • McDonald’s restaurants feed 68 million people every day
  • McDonald’s invests £40 million in staff training every year
  • The company’s yellow arches are recognised by more people worldwide than the Christian cross