The Big Mac turned 50 last year, and this beefy tower has had quite a life, surviving
many changes and controversies, always maintaining its title as everyone’s favorite McDonald’s
burger.
Although it is now world famous, some facts about the Big Mac may still shock and surprise
you to learn about.
So here are 10 Big Mac facts McDonald’s always secretly knew about.
The Big Mac was invented by franchise owner, Jim Delligatti
You might think that the Big Mac was crafted by flavor scientists or CEOs, but it actually
has much humbler beginnings in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Jim Delligatti bought the Uniontown McDonald’s after meeting Ray Kroc, the owner of the McDonald’s
company at the time, at a restaurant fair in 1955.
By the 1960s, Jim Delligatti had earned himself some regular customers, many of whom worked
at the nearby steel mill.
Working with steel all day gave these customers quite the appetite, and it became clear to
Delligatti that his food couldn’t quite fill them up.
Delligatti then decided to make a bigger, more filling burger with two patties, some
onions and some pickles.
This rolled out in Uniontown in 1967 for the fair price of 45 cents.
This was so popular that, in just one year, the Big Mac was on the menu of every single
American McDonald’s.
In 1969, the Big Mac made up 19% of all sales!
McDonald’s gave Delligatti a plaque to commemorate his invention and Delligatti apparently went
on to eat a Big Mac every week.
In 2007, he opened the Big Mac museum in Irwin, Pennsylvania, which is home to the world’s
largest Big Mac: a 14 foot tall statue, where each pickle alone is 2 feet across.
Imagine how many steel workers that could feed!
The ‘Special Sauce’ recipe has been changed multiple times
This Special Sauce is a staple of the Big Mac and has been kept top secret since its
creation in the 1960’s.
Originally called ‘Secret Sauce’, this signature flavor combination has undergone
multiple re-brands and redesigns before becoming the Special Sauce we all know and love now.
When the Big Mac released, McDonald's made two different sauces for the Big Mac.
After seeing that both sauces were popular, they combined them into one mega-sauce, which
contained all the best bits of each.
This was then branded ‘Big Mac Sauce ’72’.
Although the name was changed to ‘Special Sauce’ in 1974, the recipe itself went unchanged
for nearly 20 years.
This legacy was ended in 1991, when McDonald’s HQ decided to tweak this classic recipe.
However, this classic sauce was revived in 2004, when Fred Turner (former McDonald's
CEO and friend of Ray Kroc) wanted the original recipe back on the Big Mac.
After a search of the archives, the original recipe was found, and the Special Sauce was
returned with the help of the original suppliers.
Thanks to Fred Turner, we can now taste the Big Mac in all its glory.
Who would’ve thought that a 50-year-old sauce would taste so good?
It wasn’t always called the ‘Big Mac’
Nowadays, the Big Mac is a household name, and has been an iconic member of the McDonald’s
menu for over 50 years.
When it was first released in 1968, the recipe was perfect, but the naming needed some work.
The original names for this beautifully beefy burger were the ‘Aristocrat’ and the ‘Blue
Ribbon Burger’.
Both of these were flops at the marketplace, with many people finding ‘Aristocrat’
hard to pronounce and confusing.
This isn’t surprising considering the burger was intended for laborers to enjoy, not just
the rich.
The ‘Big Mac’ name was coined by a woman named Esther Glickstein Rose.
Rose was working as an advertising secretary for McDonald’s corporate headquarters in
Oak Brook Illinois when she saw the Big Mac and created the catchy title.
According to Rose, her bosses originally laughed it off when she suggested it!
It wasn’t until after all the other name attempts flopped that the execs decided to
use Esther’s idea.
Unfortunately, the only compensation she received for her massive contribution was a plaque,
nearly 20 years later.
Half a century later, the name has still survived.
The Big Mac has become one of our most-loved McDonald’s goodies, and the name might be
one of the reasons it is now the second best-selling item of all time (if you’re wondering, fries
take the top spot).
We think Esther deserves a cut of those deep profits!
Everyone knows the top-secret sauce recipe
For years, McDonald’s has marketed their Big Mac sauce as a secret recipe and has even
sold bottles of the coveted Big Mac Sauce to hungry buyers.
Amazingly, one bottle of Special Sauce sold for nearly $100,000 on eBay.
Clearly it was a valuable secret, but nowadays, it’s an open one.
Who let the cat out of the bag?
McDonalds did!
In 2012, the Vice President of Culinary Innovation for McDonald’s, Dan Coudreaut, showed everyone
how to make the Big Mac (including the Special Sauce) from home.
According to the video, it’s a mix of mayo, mustard, sweet pickle relish and white wine
vinegar seasoned with onion, garlic and paprika.
Although he shows you the method, he doesn’t give exact measurements, so you might need
to do some guesswork and taste as you go.
However, even this is controversial, as the real recipe has supposedly been leaked online
and differs from the one shown in the video.
The leaked recipe contains more ingredients (33, in total) than the McDonalds instructional
video uses, such as high fructose corn syrup and preservatives.
These do more than just prepare the sauce for mass distribution, those extra ingredients
really affect the taste, too!
It seems McDonald’s will never take away the mystery of the Special Sauce.
One man has eaten 30,000 Big Macs
We all love McDonald’s, but this man has taken it to the extreme.
Don Gorske is the Guinness World Record holder for Big Mac digestion for more than 15 years
and has eaten Big Macs nearly every day since he first tasted one in 1972.
On the day it all started, Gorske ordered three Big Macs and immediately fell in love.
He went back later that day and got 6 more, and was hooked.
At the start of his obsession, he ate 265 Big Macs in a month.
This amounts to 4,600 calories and 247 grams of fat per day, well above the recommended
daily allowance.
According to Gorske, the habit started when told himself he would eat Big Macs every day
until he was drafted for the Vietnam War.
In the end he wasn’t drafted, so he never stopped!
Nowadays, he’s down to just two Big Macs a day, and he always keeps back-ups.
So he never misses a day, he keeps six Big Macs stored in his freezer for emergencies,
and even packs Big Macs in his luggage for flights!
Gorske has been a loyal McDonald’s customer for years, and although he has no serious
health problems from this diet, it is crazy how addictive the Big Mac really is.
The Big Mac is no longer trademarked
McDonalds recently went head-to-head with an Irish chain called ‘Supermac’s’ in
a trademark dispute, where they lost the EU trademarking rights for the Big Mac.
This is a big deal as McDonalds barely ever loses court cases, and this one meant that
other fast-food joints can legally sell copy-cat Big Macs.
Supermac’s made the complaint against McDonald’s, accusing them of ‘trademark bullying’.
They claimed that McDonald’s used the Big Mac name to prevent Supermac’s from being
able to trademark their own name in the EU and expanding through Europe.
Supermac’s called the win a “victory for all small businesses”, but this was a big
loss for McDonald’s.
Immediately after the ruling, Burger King released a new line of fast food items called
‘Not Big Macs’ which included burgers such as the ‘Kind of like a Big Mac but
juicier and tastier’.
That’s some pretty direct shade you’re throwing there, Burger King!
Obviously, this was not ideal for McDonald’s and they have already started their appeal
for the verdict to change.
In the meantime, we can at least enjoy the trolling, and the many more Big-Mac-like burgers
that can piggyback on this verdict for our pleasure.
It inspired the ‘Big Mac Index’
The Big Mac Index was invented by The Economist in 1986 as an easily-digestible (pardon the
pun) guide to comparing economies.
It is used to test the idea that exchange rates should line up in different countries
so that the price of goods (or Big Macs) is the same.
The so-called ‘Burgernomics’ allows them to create a Big Mac exchange rate.
For example, Big Macs in the US cost $5, whereas they cost 20 yuan in China, making an exchange
rate of 1:4.
The actual exchange rate is $1=6.4 yuan and so this means that the Big Mac in China is
undervalued (cheaper) compared with the US Big Mac.
There’s some more complex math that comes afterwards, but this is essentially what they
use the Big Mac Index for.
The Big Mac Index was intended to be a method of making exchange rates clearer for The Economist’s
reader but has since taken off.
It is now a global standard, and has become widely used in textbooks and academic research.
Aside from helping us learn about the economy, Burgernomics shows you where to get a cheaper
Big Mac, with Switzerland being the most expensive and Russia being the cheapest.
Big Macs aren’t the same everywhere
Before you pack your bags to get the cheapest Big Mac you can find, bear in mind that the
Big Mac changes its recipe depending on the country it is being sold in.
One surprising tweak is that, in some places, the Big Mac doesn’t use beef.
McDonald’s is the world’s largest user of beef, and so in places like India, where
the cow is revered, McDonald’s isn’t quite as beloved as it is here.
Pro-cow rallies are common in India, so to avoid controversy, they have stripped beef
from the whole menu.
Due to the 140 million Indian Muslims, there’s also no pork, so all menu items are substituted
with either mutton or chicken.
Therefore, the Big Mac there is called the ‘Maharaja Mac’ and it is quite different
from the classic burger we know.
With chicken patties, habanero sauce, jalapenos and tomatoes, it shares very little with its
ancestor.
It doesn’t even have the Special Sauce!
Although it might seem that this would be successful, there’s also a large amount
of resistance against multinationals setting up shop in India, and so the restaurants are
often empty.
McDonalds tried to cut prices to draw people in, so the Maharaja Mac now costs 187 rupees,
or $2.69 US.
It’s a pretty good deal, right?
The future of the Big Mac is uncertain in India, but don’t worry, there’s plenty
of other places you can get your fix.
McDonald’s wanted to pay rappers to say ‘Big Mac’ in their songs
Back in 2005, McDonald’s thought up a new and scandalous way to advertise their favourite
burger to young people.
The plan was to pay rappers up to $5 every time a song containing the words ‘Big Mac’
was played on air.
Although they allowed the rappers to write the burger into the song in any way they wanted,
McDonald’s had the final say over whether the lyrics were appropriate.
Although this isn’t the first time that products have been promoted in rap music (Gucci,
Bentley and Porsche to name a few), there was backlash when the plans were announced.
Nowadays, it is much easier to tell when content is sponsored.
Laws now require influencers and YouTubers to state whether what they are posting is
a paid promotion.
Back in 2005, however, people were worried that children would not understand that the
artists were paid to advertise the burger.
They were also concerned about the already alarming rates of childhood obesity being
increased by these targeted advertisements.
The McDonald’s company defended itself, saying: “each McDonald's market has the
freedom to design programmes that best resonate with customers”.
They had also made efforts to promote a balanced lifestyle and offer more fruit and veggies
on the menu.
This plan eventually stalled and so there is not much Big-Mac-themed music hitting the
airwaves.
I guess we’ll have to keep making do with songs about love and heartbreak.
80% of Millennials have never tried a Big Mac
This one is shocking!
According to the Wall Street Journal, only 1 in 5 people ages 18-34 have ever tried a
Big Mac.
Despite it being the second most popular item on the menu, it seems that young people just
aren’t lovin’ it.
So why isn’t the Big Mac selling to millennials?
A franchisee reportedly told McDonald’s that is has ‘gotten less relevant with time’.
Millennial consumers are generally choosing fresher, made-to-order burgers nowadays, such
as Five Guys and Shake Shack.
Research shows that millennials are particularly concerned about the healthiness and ethics
of their purchases.
McDonald’s are trying to access this crowd, by making all burgers to order and using fresh
beef.
They’ve also gone wider with the effort, using cage-free eggs and removing antibiotics
from their food.
But is this modern rebranding enough to save the Big Mac from obscurity?
Well, the Big Mac has made a comeback, with the release last year of the Grand Mac, the
Big Mac’s super-sized cousin, selling out across the UK in what some branches called
a ‘national shortage’.
This limited edition 50th anniversary burger gave the Big Mac some much-needed promotion
and proved that the Big Mac is not as obsolete as everyone had thought.
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