Some eight decades ago, the McDonald brothers opened their restaurant with a very different
vision than what it would eventually become. As times changed, the McDonald's menu changed
with items appearing and disappearing. Here's what McDonald's menu looked like the year
you were born.
Brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald opened the first McDonald's on the corner of 14th
and North E Streets in San Bernardino, California, on May 15, 1940. But this restaurant looked
nothing like the ones we've come to know today. It had no indoor seating and only a few stools
at an outside counter. Most customers would just pull their cars into the parking lot
and have their food served to them by carhops.
But the most notable difference between that first McDonald's and what the chain would
eventually become was its early focus on barbecue. The brothers would slow-cook meat for hours
in a barbecue pit filled with hickory chips that they imported all the way from Arkansas.
The barbecue stand quickly gained popularity, with annual sales topping $200,000.
The first McDonald's location was successful, but it wasn’t because of the barbecue. Instead,
hamburgers were accounting for 80 percent of the restaurant's sales. The brothers shut
the restaurant down for three months in 1948 and completely overhauled the business model.
When it reopened, McDonald's had become a self-service eatery. Most importantly, it
pared down its menu to just hamburgers, cheeseburgers, soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and
a slice of pie. The hamburger cost just 15 cents.
"Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?
"Yeah, gimme a hamburger, a French fries, and a Coca-Cola."
"That'll be 35 cents please."
Not only was the menu a noticeable change, but McDonald's was revolutionizing the food
service industry. Its entire operation was now based on speed, consistency, and keeping
costs and prices as low as possible. Inspired by Henry Ford and automobile manufacturing,
McDonald's implemented an assembly-line production of hamburgers. This ensured that each hamburger
was made exactly the same and could be delivered to customers without any wait. This low-cost,
high-volume business model is still a hallmark of McDonald's today.
It's difficult to imagine McDonald's not offering French fries. After all, it serves nine million
pounds of fries each day, making them the restaurant's most popular item. But believe
it or not, French fries weren't always on the menu, even after McDonald's switched from
barbecue to burgers. The restaurant was struggling when it first reopened in 1948. Once the McDonald
brothers swapped out potato chips for French fries, however, sales went up, and the rest
is history.
McDonald's French fries haven't been completely without controversy. Up until the 1990s, the
fries were cooked in beef tallow, which is high in cholesterol. After some public uproar,
McDonald's switched to vegetable oil.
The McDonald's corporation owes a great deal of its success to its franchising business
model. But franchisees have contributed to far more than just the bottom line. These
independent business owners created many, if not most, of the famous fast food restaurant's
iconic menu items. That trend started with the Filet-O-Fish.
In 1959, Lou Groen opened the first McDonald's in the Cincinnati area, specifically in Monfort
Heights. There was one problem with owning a hamburger restaurant in this neighborhood:
The population was 87% Catholic. And back in the early years of Groen's business, Catholics
would avoid meat on all Fridays throughout the year.
To stay afloat, Groen devised a new fish sandwich to sell. He took the idea to McDonald's chief
Ray Kroc, who had his own meatless menu idea: A slice of pineapple on a bun called the Hula
Burger. Kroc agreed to put both on the menu and see which sold best. The Filet-O-Fish
won overwhelmingly.
Jim Delligatti opened his first of several McDonald's restaurant in Pittsburgh in 1957.
However, the restaurants were suffering from low sales volumes. To fix this, Delligatti
thought he needed to add to the menu in hopes that it would broaden the customer base.
Delligatti had previously managed a Big Boy drive-in chain that had a double-decker sandwich
on its menu. When it came time to add to his McDonald's menu, he created his own riff on
this by combining two beef patties, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a bun. The
final ingredient was a special sauce that to this day remains a secret.
Aside from its taste, the burger has been aided by some successful marketing, including
an unforgettable commercial jingle. "The McDonald's Big Mac. You gotta taste it
to believe it." The restaurant chain estimated in 2007 that
it was selling approximately 550 million Big Macs in the United States each year.
The Quarter Pounder trails only the Big Mac on the list of McDonald's most iconic burgers.
So famous is it that it found its way into one of the most famous bits of dialogue in
recent movie history.
"You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?"
"The don't call it a quarter pounder with cheese?"
"No man, they got the metric system over there."
McDonald's released the Quarter Pounder burger nationwide beginning in 1973. It was invented
by Al Bernardin, a McDonald's corporate employee who eventually rose to become head of the
McDonald's training center, Hamburger University. But his most notable contribution came after
he left headquarters to open a McDonald's franchise in Fremont, California. Wanting
to satiate customers looking for, as he said, "a higher ratio of meat to bun," Bernardin
came up with a more substantial burger.
Yet another franchisee-created menu item came about in the mid-1970s with the introduction
of the Egg McMuffin. This breakfast staple was the brainchild of Herb Peterson, who owned
a McDonald's in Santa Barbara, California. Peterson believed McDonald's could be a successful
morning-hours restaurant but didn't think people wanted to eat burgers for breakfast.
A fan of eggs Benedict, Peterson experimented with a sandwich version of the dish. Eschewing
hollandaise sauce because of its messiness, Peterson placed butter and cheese on top of
an egg, along with Canadian bacon, all in between an English muffin.
Not only was the Egg McMuffin another popular menu item, but it opened a whole new market
for McDonald's. By 1981, breakfast accounted for nearly 20 percent of the restaurant's
sales. 1979: The Happy Meal
In the late 1970s, a McDonald's St. Louis regional advertising manager, Dick Brams,
suggested the idea of creating a meal just for kids. In 1979, it came to fruition when
a circus-wagon-themed Happy Meal was served. It had most of the same components you'll
find today: a hamburger or cheeseburger, French fries, cookies, and a soft drink.
The final, and most important Happy Meal ingredient is the toy. Back then, lucky kids received
a stencil, wallet, ID bracelet, puzzle lock, spinning top, or McDonaldland-character eraser.
Nowadays, the toys change nearly every week. Over the years, they have included Transformers,
Hello Kitty, Legos, Teletubbies, and G.I. Joe. The most notable upgrade occurred in
1987, when Disney character toys first appeared.
In the 1970’s McDonald’s faced a very difficult challenge as consumer behavior began
to shift. It was during this time that the government began recommending people eat less
red meat due to its high fat and cholesterol content.
Wanting to keep the customers who were eating less beef, the restaurant looked to chicken
for help. Their first few ideas, including fried chicken and a deep-fried chicken pot
pie, failed. Eventually, they decided to simplify the dish by cutting the chicken into chunks,
battering it, and throwing it in the fryer. Just five months later, in 1980, McDonald's
served its first Chicken McNuggets in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It would take a few years for the company to build out their restaurants' infrastructures
to be able to make the countless nuggets they would need to, but in 1983, Chicken McNuggets
finally became available nationwide.
The McRib made its way onto McDonald's menus in the early 1980s. As it turns out, it was
the result of the popularity of the recently introduced Chicken McNuggets. Consumers were
buying so many nuggets that it resulted in a chicken shortage. In order to give diners
another option, McDonald's created a pork sandwich.
But just a few years after its debut, it was pulled from menus and replaced with the McDLT,
a burger that came with lettuce and tomato. Though this doesn't seem like a revolutionary
idea, McDonald's had long resisted adding vegetables to their burgers. It wasn't until
they came up with a two-compartment storage box that kept hot and cold ingredients separated
that the restaurant relented.
As for the McRib, it made a brief return in 1994. Since then, it has been an elusive item
to find, popping up on the McDonald's menu here and there for a limited time.
By the mid-1980s, McDonald's was bringing in $11 billion in sales per year. During this
time, the fast food pizza industry was growing rapidly. Despite pizza and hamburgers not
necessarily being a natural fit, McDonald's wanted a slice of the proverbial pie.
The company's pizza testing started in 1986 and expanded a few years later, and by the
1990s, approximately 40 percent of the McDonald's locations in the United States were serving
pizza. But that's about as far as it got. The product
had notable problems that eventually caused it to be removed from the menu. Restaurants
needed new equipment to make pizza and had to remodel their kitchens. Furthermore, pizza
takes time to cook, so customers had extended wait times.
The McDonald's health kick continued into the 1990s as critics continued to rail against
fast food restaurants' limited offerings. Eventually, McDonald's unveiled the McLean
Deluxe. It contained just nine percent fat by weight, significantly less than the 20
percent most of the restaurant's other burgers had.
The McLean had a lot of things going against it. Most evident was a lack of flavor.
"Low fat, and delicious? Can't be done."
Seasoned water was added to the beef patties to make up for the missing fat, most of which
burned off in the cooking. The McLean dried out quickly, so it had to be made to order,
which went completely against McDonald's business model of getting customers in and out as quickly
as possible. All this plus the fact that the burger was also McDonald's most expensive
led to the McLean having a short shelf life.
McDonald's added some big hits to its dessert menu in the early 1990s. First came the baked
apple pie, introduced in 1992. The restaurant, of course, had already been serving apple
pie going back as far as the 1960s. But these pies were fried, and with increased health
concerns, sales waned. So McDonald's updated the apple pie by baking it instead.
A few years later, a creative franchise owner in Canada named Ron McLellan came up with
what would prove to be McDonald's signature dessert: The McFlurry. This concoction of
soft serve ice cream mixed with candy, was first served at McLellan's restaurant in Bathurst,
New Brunswick. It has since spread to menus around the world.
In an attempt to appeal to more adults, McDonald's created the Arch Deluxe, a more expensive
burger, which was a quarter pound of beef, bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheese, onions, ketchup,
and secret sauce. McDonald's has always been known for its cheap, quick food, so trying
to go for a more sophisticated look did not work.
Sales of the burger disappointed, a fact that on its own may not have been a disaster. But
McDonald's spent $150 million and created a huge marketing campaign to promote its new
product. The Arch Deluxe began being phased out in 1998 and was gone from menus completely
by 2000.
McDonald's opened a new type of store to kick off the 21st century. It was supposed to be
more upscale than a typical fast food outlet, with leather couches, bistro-style tables,
and food served on fine china with stainless steel flatware.
Although all McCafes were located within or adjacent to traditional McDonald's restaurants,
the menu was significantly different. As the name implies, its offerings included gourmet
coffees, teas, pastries, and desserts. Brick-and-mortar McCafe locations didn't last long, and since
2009, McCafe food and beverage items have become fully integrated into the traditional
McDonald's menu.
Beginning in 2002, McDonald's offered several different items for just $1 each. These included
a McChicken sandwich, McValue fries, a small or medium soft drink, a Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait,
a side salad, two baked apple pies, a sundae, and the restaurant's newest burger at the
time, the Big N' Tasty.
The idea behind the Dollar Menu was to lure customers in with extremely inexpensive food
and then try to upsell them with other items in hopes of getting them to spend more. The
strategy only half-worked. The people came, but they didn't spend; at least not enough
for the menu to work. During the first month of the Dollar Menu's existence, the chain's
average check total actually fell three cents in value.
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