When I met Steve Easterbrook, 41, chief executive for the past three years of McDonald's UK – with 71,000 employees and annual sales of ￡1.9bn – he was sitting in a relatively quiet corner of a McDonald's outlet in Victoria station. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “I've been interviewed several times for the business pages but never by a restaurant writer. Thank you for tracking me down.”

I explained that I was keen to understand a restaurant group that 80 per cent of all families in the UK visit at least once a year . And, now that McDonald's has just reported one of its most successful trading years ever in the UK, a sales increase of 10 per cent in 2008 without building additional restaurants, I was interested in what lessons there might be here for other British restaurateurs.

After being taken on a tour of the kitchen and meeting Pru Nak, the franchisee who runs another 23 branches from London to Reading, I came away with not only a high opinion of Easterbrook but an insight into how this once-reviled company could help British restaurateurs work towards a solution of one of their biggest challenges.