Moscow’s Golden Arches

Soviet consumers enjoyed one of the mainstays of many Americans' diets: the "Beeg Mek." On January 31, 1991, McDonald's opened its first restaurant in the Soviet Union. Located on Pushkin Square in Moscow, it's the biggest McDonald's in the world. It has 27 cash registers and 700 seats and can serve more than 15,000 customers a day. Soviet citizens were delighted with the beautiful restaurant and the tasty food. But best of all they liked the friendly, polite service of the teenagers who waited on them. The food seemed inexpensive to Western tourists: a Big Mac, French fries, and cola cost about 5 rubles -- less than one dollar in U.S. currency. But this was a great deal of money for the average Soviet citizen, earning about 10 rubles a day. Still, many Soviets considered McDonald's food a treat. (Grolier Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia)