Restaurant Chains

It's really been a surprise the extent to which so many restaurants are franchises here. At least in the outer zone suburbs anyway, I'd imagine most restaurants are chains. I'd always expected chains of fast food and sandwich shops (in "the City" it's practically a sequence of EAT, Pret a Manger, Itsu, and Wasabi repeating every 100 metres), but it gets so repetitive when every suburb you go to (or even town for that matter) is almost guaranteed to have most or all of the following down it's main strip (sorry, High Street) Pizza Express, Carluccio’s, Strada, Zizzi, GBK, Cote, Byron Burger, GBK (and if the retail area is large enough there will be a Wagamama, Giraffe, Jamie's Italian and even pub chain's like All Bar One)... Maybe it's to do with the retail rental prices and the state of the economy but for a country with so many historic towns and so much history, it makes everywhere look and taste surprisingly the same. Sometimes that's reassuring I suppose, and there are always plenty of pubs, but it's not like I get a chance to go to those much. Update: Actually a little serching and I see that a whole load of these restaurants are owned by the same company, which just shows the choice is even less - Pizza Express, Byron and Zizzi are all the same company.