How the Most Famous Burger in the World Was Created in Pittsburgh

Big Mac is such a cult symbol of McDonald’s, which would be easy to assume that it was on the menu since the start of the fast food chain. But this high burger did not actually arrive on the site of McDonald’s up to 27 years after the restaurant was first founded – and his invention is all thanks to one devoted franchise Michael James “Jima” Deligatti.

Delligatti received the first taste of the restaurant business when he returned from hostilities in the Second World War and ruled a passage restaurant to Newport Beach, California, but his fast-power ambitions really took off after visiting the show of the National Association of Restaurants, one of the largest annual meetings of professionals in The catering areas – in Chicago in 1955.

There he met Ray Crokent in a franchise for a network who would continue to buy McDonald’s from its founders and become its general director, and decided to become an early franchisee of the then 15-year-old company. (1955 was the same year when Krok opened the first McDonald’s east of the Mississippi River.)

The first location of Dellingtti McDonald’s opened in Western Pennsylvania in 1957, and over the next 25 years it will continue to open another 47 in the Pittsburgh region. His restaurants were faced with rigid competition from such chains as Big Boy-known by their hamburgers in the style in two-stage classes and Burger King, encouraging Delligatti to realize that its adjusters may want more Burger.

In 1965, Dellygatti began to push the company to allow him to offer a hamburger with two beef cutlets instead of one, and after a two -year unwillingness, the corporate office gave him approval to check his creation in one of his restaurants in Uniontaun, a Pennsylvania state.

Thus, Big Mack debuted on April 22, 1967. According to The New York Times, the first newspaper advertisement for a specialized sandwich called him a burger with “two freshly prostrate cutlets, sharp molten cheese, a clear salad, Marin, and our own special sauce.” Early printing ads also often included the phrase “trick” “Food disguised as a sandwich” to emphasize the size of the burger.

The new proposal of the menu became a hit in its first place, and just a year later, in 1968, Big Mac sold in McDonald’s restaurants throughout the country. After 57 years, he is still here, and perhaps became the subject of the menu, is most often associated with gold arches.

Jim Deligatti died in November 2016 at 98 years old, and several large retail outlets, noting his passage through thoughtful necrologues. According to his son, he ates at least one Big Mac every week most of his long life.

The history of Big Mack is filled with other interesting facts that any major McDonald’s fan should know. Keep them at hand to demonstrate your knowledge of Burger at a party or just prove your passion for Big Mac:

Big Mac had almost no other name

The name “Big Mack” was actually invented by Esther Glickstein Rose, who in 1967 was a 21-year-old secretary in the advertising department in the Chicago Corporate office of the company. Rose told CBS News that her idea was caused when the product product is a product manager “said:“ I need a name for this new large hamburger … He described it to me, and outside my head I said: “Big Mac”. Read her contribution in 1985. (Although McDonald’s loans went up to the idea of ​​the name, the family of Jim Deligatti is reported, I do not agree with this history of origin.)

Before Rose proposed a name that stuck for more than 50 years, McDonald’s considered the opportunity to call a sandwich either an “aristocrat” or a “burger of the blue tape”, none of which feels that it is just as well.

The most risky part of the launch of the Big Mack is its price

McDonald’s leaders greatly reluctantly used the idea of ​​Dellingtti for a larger burger, because they were worried that it would be too expensive for their client base. When the Big Mac was represented approximately in a dozen restaurants by Jim Deligatti, it cost 45 cents, which is more than twice as much as the cost of an ordinary hamburger from a restaurant at that time – but ultimately this was not a sales barrier.

Delligatti presented another important part of the menu

Big Mac was not the only long contribution to Dellingtti in McDonald’s – he also played an important role in deploying the chain breakfast menu. His restaurants were given a pancake and sausage food for steel from Pennsylvania, who needed to eat after they left the night shifts.

Big Mack has become an economic standard

In 1986, the economist introduced the Big Mac index, which acts as a “carefree leadership on whether currencies are located at their“ correct ”level, according to the newspaper. The index uses the BIG Mac price in different places around the world to demonstrate the difference in consumer’s customer ability between countries and excessive or underestimated.

Pennsylvania is a home for the official museum of Big Mack

The McDonald’s restaurant of the McDonald’s restaurant in North Huntingdon, the Pennsylvania – the village on the outskirts of the city – is the Big Mack Museum of Petsburg. While guests are waiting for their orders, they can check several exhibits that emphasize the history of the sandwich, photograph the Big Mac statue 14 feet high and whisper thanks to the comprehensive bust of Jim Deligatti.