Big Mac

The Big Mac is a brand of hamburger sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. It was introduced by a Greater Pittsburgh area franchisee in 1967 and expanded nationwide in 1968, and is widely regarded as the company's flagship product.
The hamburger features a three-slice sesame-seed bun containing two beef patties, one slice of cheese, shredded lettuce, pickles, minced onions, and a Thousand Island-type dressing advertised as "special sauce." Seasonal and regional variants have been offered, including chicken versions.
The Big Mac is known worldwide and often used as a symbol of American capitalism and decadence. The Economist has used it as a reference point for comparing the cost of living in different countries – the Big Mac Index – as it is so widely available and is comparable across markets.
The Big Mac was created by Jim Delligatti, who stated later he did not invent the Big Mac but merely copied the double deck hamburger marketed by the Big Boy hamburger chain since the 1940s. Mr. Delligatti operated several McDonald's restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. It was created in the kitchen of Delligatti's first McDonald's franchise, located on McKnight Road in suburban Ross Township.
The Big Mac debuted at the McDonald's owned by Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on April 22, 1967, selling for US$0.45 (equivalent to $4.24 in 2024).
It was designed to compete with Big Boy Restaurants' Big Boy hamburger. Eat'n Park was the Pittsburgh area's Big Boy franchisee at the time. The Big Mac proved popular and it was added to the menu of all U.S. McDonald's restaurants in 1968.
The Big Mac had two previous names, both of which failed in the marketplace: the Aristocrat and the Blue Ribbon Burger. The third name, Big Mac, was created by Esther Glickstein Rose, a 21-year-old advertising secretary who worked at McDonald's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois.
The Big Mac is made with two 1.6 oz (45 g) beef patties, a "special sauce" (similar to Thousand Island dressing), shredded iceberg lettuce, one processed American cheese slice, two slices of dill pickle, and minced onions, served on a three slice sesame seed bun. On October 1, 2018, McDonald's announced that it would remove all artificial preservatives, flavors, and coloring from the Big Mac.
Big Mac Sauce is delivered to McDonald's restaurants in sealed canisters designed by Sealright, from which it is meant to be directly dispensed using a calibrated "sauce gun" that dispenses a specified amount of the sauce for each pull of the trigger.
In 2012, McDonald's executive chef Dan Coudreaut released a YouTube video revealing the recipe of the sauce. It consists of store-bought mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish and yellow mustard whisked together with vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.
In 2018, McDonald's revamped the sauce by removing potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and calcium disodium EDTA.
The sauce is occasionally available for purchase on its own for a limited time. The first time was in 2015. A 25 ml (0.85 U.S. fl oz) tube was available for purchase but only in restaurants in Australia. It was available again in 2020. A 50 ml (1.7 U.S. fl oz) pot was available for purchase but only in restaurants in the UK and Ireland. In 2023 and early 2024 it was available in Hungary.
The Big Mac, along with many other McDonald's products, was first served in a collapsible cardboard container that was changed to a "clamshell" style, polystyrene foam container in the late 1970s. Polystyrene foam containers were phased out beginning in 1990, due to environmental concerns.
In 1974 McDonald's commissioned an advertising jingle which popularized the list of ingredients of the Big Mac: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun."
In 2008, McDonald's restaurants in Malaysia revived the slogan. The revival included the original prize of a free Big Mac if the customer was able to recite the slogan in under four seconds. It was released in May, along with the promotional Mega Mac, which had four beef patties instead of two.
McDonald's began a television advertising campaign appealing to children in 1971 featuring a fantasy world populated by Ronald McDonald and various mascots promoting McDonald's products. Some characters were also modeled in McDonald's store playground equipment. The Big Mac was represented by Officer Big Mac, a Keystone Cops-style policeman with a giant Big Mac sandwich for a head. The characters were revised after a 1973 plagiarism lawsuit brought by television puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft because of similarities to their H.R. Pufnstuf characters. A modified Officer Big Mac continued in the commercials until 1985.
In 2005, McDonald's began offering product placement rewards to hip hop artists who namechecked the Big Mac in their music, giving US$5 to the artist for every time a song mentioning the hamburger was played on the radio.
McDonald's sued the Irish fast-food chain Supermac's for trademark infringement and claimed the name would confuse consumers in European markets. On 11 January 2019, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) ruled in Supermac's favor in what has been called a "David vs. Goliath" victory. McDonald's submitted a copy of the Wikipedia article about the Big Mac as part of its evidence, but the court found the Wikipedia page was not acceptable as "independent evidence".
In 2023, the EUIPO Board of Appeal annulled the decision after McDonald's filed 700 pages of additional evidence, despite objections.
Supermac's responded by bringing the case to the European Court of Justice, which finally ruled in 2024 that McDonald's had not proven use of the Big Mac trademark when it came to poultry products or operating restaurants. The ruling does not affect the trademark with respect to the Big Mac burger product.
In 2007, Danya Proud, a McDonald's spokeswoman, said that in the United States alone, 560 million Big Macs are sold each year. This would mean that approximately 17 Big Macs are sold every second.
On August 22, 2007, McDonald's opened the Big Mac Museum in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania to celebrate the Big Mac's 40th anniversary. The museum features the world's largest Big Mac statue (measuring 14 feet high and 12 feet wide) and has hundreds of historical artifacts and exhibits that celebrate the Big Mac.
Some Uniontown residents were unhappy with the selected location.
The Big Mac is a geographically localized product. In the United States, the Big Mac has 580 kcal (2,400 kJ), 34 grams of fat and 25 grams of protein. In Australia, the burger is slightly smaller with 559 kcal (2,340 kJ) and 26.9 grams of fat, but similar amounts of protein with 25.2 grams, while the Japanese burger tops out the scales at 557 kcal and 30.5 grams of fat. Several McDonald's subsidiaries adapt the standard features of the Big Mac (from the US) to regional requirements.