The Big Mac is a brand of

hamburger A hamburger (or simply a burger) consists of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or chilis ...

sold by the international fast food restaurant chain

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

. It was introduced by a

Greater Pittsburgh Greater Pittsburgh is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania, United States. The region includes Allegheny County, Pittsburgh's urban core county and economic hub, and seven adjacent Pennsylvania cou ...

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 ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'' has used it as a reference point for comparing the

cost of living The cost of living is the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living for an individual or a household. Changes in the cost of living over time can be measured in a cost-of-living index. Cost of living calculations are also used to compare t ...

in different countries – the

Big Mac Index The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by ''The Economist'' as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currency, currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates re ...

– as it is so widely available and is comparable across markets.

History

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 Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

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 Uniontown is the largest city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. The population was 9,984 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, southeast of Pittsburgh. History southeast of ...

, on April 22, 1967, selling for . 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 Oak Brook is a village (Illinois), village in DuPage County, Illinois, with a very small portion in Cook County, Illinois, Cook County. The population was 8,163 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A suburb of Chicago, it contains th ...

Product

The Big Mac is made with two beef patties, a "special sauce" (similar to Thousand Island dressing), shredded

iceberg lettuce Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae mostly grown as a leaf vegetable. The leaves are most often used raw in green salads, although lettuce is also seen in other kinds of food, such as sandwiches, wraps an ...

, one processed American cheese slice, two slices of

dill pickle A pickled cucumber – commonly known as a pickle in the United States, Canada and Australia and a gherkin ( ) in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand – is a usually small or miniature cucumber that has been Pickling, pickled in ...

, and minced

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' , from Latin ), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion which was classifie ...

s, served on a three slice

sesame Sesame (; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a plant in the genus '' Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cultivated for ...

seed bun. On October 1, 2018, McDonald's announced that it would remove all artificial preservatives, flavors, and coloring from the Big Mac.

Sauce

In the past, Big Mac Sauce was delivered to McDonald's restaurants in sealed canisters designed by Sealright, from which it was directly dispensed using a calibrated "sauce gun" that would dispense a specified amount of the sauce for each pull of the trigger. In 2023, McDonald's introduced a new "next gen" sauce dispenser that uses soft bags of sauce and a plunger to compress the bag with a ratchet system. The new sauce dispenser is also used for McChicken Sauce and Tartare Sauce. In 2012 McDonald's executive chef

Dan Coudreaut Dan Coudreaut (born November 8, 1965) is an American chef. He was the executive chef and vice president of culinary innovation at McDonald's from 2004 to 2018. Biography Coudreaut started his culinary career at the age of 14, washing dishes in a ...

released a YouTube video revealing the recipe of the sauce. It consists of store-bought

mayonnaise Mayonnaise (), colloquially referred to as "mayo" (), is a thick, creamy sauce with a rich and tangy taste that is commonly used on sandwiches, hamburgers, Salad#Bound salads, bound salads, and French fries. It also forms the base for various o ...

, sweet pickle relish and yellow mustard whisked together with

vinegar Vinegar () is an aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavorings. Vinegar typically contains from 5% to 18% acetic acid by volume. Usually, the acetic acid is produced by a double fermentation, converting ...

, garlic powder,

onion powder Onion powder is Drying (food), dehydrated, ground onion used as a seasoning. It is a common ingredient in seasoned salt and spice mixes, such as beau monde seasoning. Some varieties are prepared using toasted onion. White, yellow, and red onions m ...

and

paprika Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally ''capsicum annuum''. It can have varying levels of Pungency, heat, but the peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce ...

. 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 tube was available for purchase but only in restaurants in Australia. It was available again in 2020. A pot was available for purchase but only in restaurants in the UK and Ireland. In 2023 and early 2024 it was available in Hungary. McDonald's Australia offers a "portion cup" of Big Mac Sauce as part of its regular menu.

Packaging

The Big Mac was first served inside a collapsible square cardboard container with a circular piece of cardboard placed around the hamburger to hold it together. The cardboard container that was changed to a "clamshell" style,

polystyrene foam Polystyrene (PS) is a synthetic polymer made from monomers of the aromatic hydrocarbon styrene. Polystyrene can be solid or foamed. General-purpose polystyrene is clear, hard, and brittle. It is an inexpensive resin per unit weight. It is a ...

container in the late 1970s. Polystyrene foam containers were phased out beginning in 1990, due to environmental concerns.

Advertising

"Two all-beef patties" jingle

In 1974 McDonald's commissioned an advertising

jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meanings that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...

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.

McDonaldland character

McDonald's began a television advertising campaign appealing to children in 1971 featuring a fantasy world populated by

Ronald McDonald Ronald McDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain. He inhabits the fictional world of McDonaldland, with his friends Mayor McCheese, the Hamburglar, Grimace, Birdie the Early Bird, an ...

and various

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, sports team, university society, society, military unit, or brand, brand name. Mascots are als ...

s 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 Sid Krofft (born July 30, 1929) and Marty Krofft (April 9, 1937 – November 25, 2023), known as The Krofft Brothers and born as Cydus and Moshopopoulos Yolas, were a Canadian sibling team of television creators, writers and puppeteers. Through ...

because of similarities to their '' H.R. Pufnstuf'' characters. A modified Officer Big Mac continued in the commercials until 1985.

Hip-hop product placement

In 2005 McDonald's began offering

product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of t ...

rewards to

hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

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.

EU trademark revocation

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 The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) () is a decentralised agency of the EU responsible for the registration of EU-wide unitary trade marks and industrial design rights. These exist alongside the intellectual property rig ...

(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 The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially the Court of Justice (), is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting ...

, 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.

US sales

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.

Variants

* The Mega Mac or Double Big Mac: four beef patties and an extra slice of cheese. Available in Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan (during promotional periods only), Turkey, Singapore, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand, and United Kingdom. It was introduced to the United States in early 2020, but was discontinued shortly after McDonald's streamlined menus during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. The sandwich returned to the US market in January 2024. The Double Big Mac is the biggest regular hamburger the chain produces and it has 680 calories. * Big Big Mac: a Quarter Pounder–like product sold in Europe (Finland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy). Has been sold periodically in Sweden, there called "Grand Big Mac". * The Denali Mac: made with two patties. Named after

Denali Denali (), federally designated as Mount McKinley, is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of above sea level. It is the tallest mountain in the world from base to peak on land, measuring . On p. 20 of Helm ...

in Alaska, and sold only in that state. * In India, where consuming beef is illegal in most states, the Big Mac is known as the Maharaja Mac and was originally made with lamb instead of beef; however, along with the company's other items, it is now made from chicken. * The Mega Tamago Mac, a limited variant of the Big Mac, was launched in Japan, consisting of three patties, a fried egg, bacon, and cheese. * The Chicken Big Mac is a Big Mac with two breaded chicken patties sold in US, UK, Canada, Pakistan, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and other countries as a limited-availability or promotional burger. * The Giga Big Mac, is sold in Japan. It is a larger version of the Big Mac with three times the meat of a regular one. * Little Mac or Mac Jr. is a reduction of the standard Big Mac which uses a two-piece bun and contains only one beef patty. It has been available as a limited-time promotion in the U.S. since 2017. * Grand Mac uses larger patties, at combined. It became available in the U.S. beginning in 2017 and was first made available overseas in the UK, Ireland, and Australia as the "Grand Big Mac" in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original Big Mac. This and the Mac Jr. were collectively known as the "Big Mac range" in the UK. * Big Mac

BLT A BLT is a type of sandwich, named for the initials of its primary ingredients, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. It can be made with varying recipes according to personal preference. Simple variants include using different types of lettuce or tomato ...

is a standard Big Mac burger with the addition of

bacon Bacon is a type of Curing (food preservation), salt-cured pork made from various cuts of meat, cuts, typically the pork belly, belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central in ...

and

tomato The tomato (, ), ''Solanum lycopersicum'', is a plant whose fruit is an edible Berry (botany), berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originate ...

. Released in Australia and New Zealand as a promotional item in late 2017. * Big Mac Bacon was introduced in selected markets in 2018, as a limited-time option. It is essentially a Big Mac with added bacon. In 2019, this was extended in the UK to the Grand Big Mac and the Mac Jr. File:McDonalds Mega Mac Malaysia.jpg, A Mega Mac burger with a large Coke and fries in

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

File:Chicken Maharaja Mac Combo (3155972375).jpg, A Chicken Maharaja Mac in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

File:Big Mac variations 2018.jpg, A Grand Big Mac (left) and Mac Jr. (right) alongside a regular Big Mac (center), released for a limited time in the UK as part of the 50th anniversary of the burger

Museum

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.

Nutritional values per geographical location

The Big Mac is a geographically localized product. In the United States, the Big Mac has , 34 grams of fat and 25 grams of protein. In Australia, the burger is slightly smaller with 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.

Gallery

File:Big Mac hamburger - Australia.jpg, Big Mac, purchased in

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

, Australia File:Big Mac combo meal.jpg, A Big Mac combo meal File:Grand Big Mac.jpg, A Grand Big Mac

References

External links

*
Official UK product information
*
The Big Mac Index
* in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania ** {{McDonald's Fast food hamburgers History of Pittsburgh McDonald's foods Products introduced in 1967