Look at any tourist brochure for Pennsylvania and you’ll see the usual gimmicky tourism fare. You know, stuff like Philadelphia, The Liberty Bell, Hersheypark, and so on. It may surprise you to learn that the Big Mac was actually born in PA, right in Uniontown outside of Pittsburgh.
According to Fox News, it was 1967 when McDonald’s franchisee Jim Delligatti decided to introduce a new menu item that would stand out from the kid-friendly cheeseburgers and fries his restaurant offered. Delligatti decided to sandwich two burgers together into one massive burger and put it on his menu, hoping that it would attract a more “adult” crowd. After all, grown-ups have grown-up appetites, right? It seems that Delligatti’s hunch was correct: Not only did the sandwich take off at his restaurant, but it was only a year later that McDonald’s put his creation on menus across the United States.
So, how did the burger that would come to define the restaurant of the Golden Arches get its name? The Associated Press tells us that it was named by Esther Glickstein Rose, a secretary who worked in the McDonald’s advertising department. Although she named the sandwich the “Big Mac,” her contribution wasn’t recognized by the company until 1985, 17 years after the fact. Although Rose never asked for money, her name was engraved on a plaque, bearing the sandwich that she so famously named.