'Big Mac' thrives in Russia.

Since it opened in 1990, the world's busiest McDonald's restaurant has served about 30,000 customers a day. It is not located in the U.S. but thousands of miles away, in Moscow's Pushkin Square, forming the basis of a real estate empire that makes McDonald's one of the largest corporate landowners in Russia. When McDonald's first arrived in Russia in 1990, there was no way to convert the rubles customers paid for burgers and shakes into another currency. So McDonald's used its rubles to buy farmland and build office towers, a distribution center, and a factory in the Moscow suburbs. The company now employs 17,000 Russians in 37 cities and plans to open 100 more restaurants by 2007. McDonald's pay doesn't seem to be an issue in Russia, where wages average $250 a month.