Creator of the Big Mac Died
November 30, 2016 5:49 PM Subscribe
Michael James Delligatti, Creator of the Big Mac, Dies at 98 "Jim Delligatti, the McDonald’s franchise owner who invented the Big Mac, died on Monday at his home in Fox Chapel, Pa. He was 98. The death was confirmed by his son Michael.
Mr. Delligatti, who opened the first McDonald’s in western Pennsylvania in 1957, owned about a dozen franchises in the Pittsburgh area by the mid-1960s, but he struggled to compete with the Big Boy and Burger King chains.
He proposed to company executives that they add a double-patty hamburger to the McDonald’s menu, something along the lines of the Big Boy, that could put a dent in sales of Burger King’s Whopper."
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posted by Bringer Tom at 6:19 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:19 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
OK, let's set some ground rules here, folks. For just this one thread, hamburger references do not indicate insincerity. 🍔
posted by zamboni at 6:23 PM on November 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 6:23 PM on November 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
All my life I assumed the Whopper was created in response to the Big Mac. Now I learn it was the other way around. My preconceived notion of the world was changed a little bit today.
.
posted by riruro at 6:23 PM on November 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
.
posted by riruro at 6:23 PM on November 30, 2016 [9 favorites]
they really must play the 70's jingle at his funeral
posted by thelonius at 6:29 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 6:29 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
(||)
posted by mbrubeck at 6:32 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 6:32 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
.
posted by dudemanlives at 6:36 PM on November 30, 2016
posted by dudemanlives at 6:36 PM on November 30, 2016
Bury him in a coffin with two lids stacked up.
posted by w0mbat at 6:46 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by w0mbat at 6:46 PM on November 30, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don't like Big Macs, too many vegetables. I am surprised to learn that the Whopper came first, though.
posted by jonmc at 6:46 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by jonmc at 6:46 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't like Big Macs, too many vegetables.
what
posted by thelonius at 6:53 PM on November 30, 2016 [20 favorites]
what
posted by thelonius at 6:53 PM on November 30, 2016 [20 favorites]
Didn't whoever invented the Big Boy invent the Big Mac at the same time?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:56 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:56 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Big Mac is unique and surprisingly unimitated among fast food sandwiches. Burger King rolled out an obvious imitation not too long ago, but most places never bother to recreate the 3:2 bun/burger ratio. I will always have a fondness for its bold refusal of the tomato, which I have no use for on burgers.
I've heard tell of an experimental 3:4 Big Mac, which sounds pretty phenominal, but I haven't seen it offered anywhere I've been to recently.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:02 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've heard tell of an experimental 3:4 Big Mac, which sounds pretty phenominal, but I haven't seen it offered anywhere I've been to recently.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:02 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I can think of at least three occasions when a big mac was exactly the thing I needed most at that moment and in fact made me just plain happy.
1) at the end of a grueling day of hardcourt tennis in cruel Midwestern August heat.
2) as my first meal after a drawn-out case of the flu. Weird, but my body screamed for salt, fat, and protein, I guess.
3) in a car en route home from a loooong, shitty day on the road.
All three are examples of the body's victory over the mind. I have never ordered a big Mac except in extreme need.
And I am glad it was there for me.
.
posted by Caxton1476 at 7:04 PM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
1) at the end of a grueling day of hardcourt tennis in cruel Midwestern August heat.
2) as my first meal after a drawn-out case of the flu. Weird, but my body screamed for salt, fat, and protein, I guess.
3) in a car en route home from a loooong, shitty day on the road.
All three are examples of the body's victory over the mind. I have never ordered a big Mac except in extreme need.
And I am glad it was there for me.
.
posted by Caxton1476 at 7:04 PM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
Yep, this is like the Hydrox/Oreo thing for me too.
posted by traveler_ at 7:04 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by traveler_ at 7:04 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
On further review the Big Boy predates the Big Mac by 30 years, in addition to the whopper predating the Big Mac, but I'll stand by my statements regarding the Big Mac. McDonalds took a regional sandwich and made it a nationwide success, that has to be worth the grand prize.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:08 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:08 PM on November 30, 2016 [2 favorites]
I've heard tell of an experimental 3:4 Big Mac, which sounds pretty phenominal, but I haven't seen it offered anywhere I've been to recently.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:02 PM on November 30 [+] [!]
The 4:2 version is available throughout Vancouver - which somehow feels very appropriate.
posted by helmutdog at 7:09 PM on November 30, 2016
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:02 PM on November 30 [+] [!]
The 4:2 version is available throughout Vancouver - which somehow feels very appropriate.
posted by helmutdog at 7:09 PM on November 30, 2016
“All I got was a plaque,” he told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2007.
Ah, corporate gratitude.
Most of Jim Delligatti net worth is assumed to have come from his restaurants which totaled to 48 back in the day. Also known to have contributed to his net worth is his Big Mac Museum, where visitors can take a photo in front of the world’s largest Big Mac. BBC notes it is 14-feet tall and over four meters wide.
Nevertheless, it sounds like the guy wasn't hurtin' any.
He received a plaque that memorialized his contribution. We, as eaters of the Big Mac, will receive a plaque that will contribute to our arterial disease.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:43 PM on November 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
Ah, corporate gratitude.
Most of Jim Delligatti net worth is assumed to have come from his restaurants which totaled to 48 back in the day. Also known to have contributed to his net worth is his Big Mac Museum, where visitors can take a photo in front of the world’s largest Big Mac. BBC notes it is 14-feet tall and over four meters wide.
Nevertheless, it sounds like the guy wasn't hurtin' any.
He received a plaque that memorialized his contribution. We, as eaters of the Big Mac, will receive a plaque that will contribute to our arterial disease.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:43 PM on November 30, 2016 [10 favorites]
The Big Macs of my youth were sodden sesame-studded pale white bread with teeny little meat-paties adorned with "American" cheese product. It was wrapped in wax-paper, and required two of the coupons from the "stocking stuffer" book my Great Aunt sent me each year... she also sent me my first transforming robot toy. The two of these combined made her the Second Best Great Aunt Ever (number one had '20s flapper stories).
I was... curious... a year or so back. What one would be like as an adult. Big Macs are now served in cleverly folded cardboard cartons, and not wax-paper or styrofoam clamshells. The buns are as full and fluffy as in the promotional photos, the lettuce and cheese draped over small yet satisfactory meat patties as in the promotional photos, and already, this was breaking my mind. I was trained as a student photographer, in how to make food look impossibly good in the studio. I ordered this Big Mac right here and it actually looked like the picture. It tasted the same from my childhood, the patties and cheese and Mac Sauce... except the fluffy bun and shredded lettuce, these were new. They were a delight.
McDonalds was serving a Big Mac that actually looked like a Big Mac. It also tasted awesome.
The soda machines weren't clean, the fry-oil hadn't been changed since the Bush administration, the shake machine seethed and rattled and cursed the operators in Aramaic. But, forgo the fries, the nuggets, the shakes the McBlizzards... just order the Big Mac with an unsweetened Ice Tea.
It's terrible for you. It will satisfy.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:03 PM on November 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
I was... curious... a year or so back. What one would be like as an adult. Big Macs are now served in cleverly folded cardboard cartons, and not wax-paper or styrofoam clamshells. The buns are as full and fluffy as in the promotional photos, the lettuce and cheese draped over small yet satisfactory meat patties as in the promotional photos, and already, this was breaking my mind. I was trained as a student photographer, in how to make food look impossibly good in the studio. I ordered this Big Mac right here and it actually looked like the picture. It tasted the same from my childhood, the patties and cheese and Mac Sauce... except the fluffy bun and shredded lettuce, these were new. They were a delight.
McDonalds was serving a Big Mac that actually looked like a Big Mac. It also tasted awesome.
The soda machines weren't clean, the fry-oil hadn't been changed since the Bush administration, the shake machine seethed and rattled and cursed the operators in Aramaic. But, forgo the fries, the nuggets, the shakes the McBlizzards... just order the Big Mac with an unsweetened Ice Tea.
It's terrible for you. It will satisfy.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:03 PM on November 30, 2016 [8 favorites]
Isn't the 3:4 version just a Double Big Mac?
posted by sixswitch at 8:06 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sixswitch at 8:06 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
jonmc: I am surprised to learn that the Whopper came first, though.
That threw me for a loop too, McDonalds was always the trailblazer and Burger King sort of played catch-up. I recall that McDonalds would do all sorts of statistical and traffic study before opening a new location, spending a fortune in research. What would Burger King do? Open a store near that McDonalds.
posted by dr_dank at 8:13 PM on November 30, 2016
That threw me for a loop too, McDonalds was always the trailblazer and Burger King sort of played catch-up. I recall that McDonalds would do all sorts of statistical and traffic study before opening a new location, spending a fortune in research. What would Burger King do? Open a store near that McDonalds.
posted by dr_dank at 8:13 PM on November 30, 2016
McDonalds was always the trailblazer and Burger King sort of played catch-up.
No, sir. White Fucking Castle was the trailblazer.
posted by jonmc at 8:18 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
No, sir. White Fucking Castle was the trailblazer.
posted by jonmc at 8:18 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
When I was about four years old, there was a contest where you sent in your phone number and they would call you up and you won something if you could name all the ingredients in the Big Mac. My Dad called me to the phone one afternoon, told me it was McDonald's, and handed me the receiver. I said, "Hello? Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun." The man's voice on the other end said, "Congratulations! You're right!" and hung up.
Then my father came in from the next room, where he had slipped away to talk to me on the extension, pointing at me and laughing his ass off.
Condolences to the Delligatti family.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:21 PM on November 30, 2016 [13 favorites]
Then my father came in from the next room, where he had slipped away to talk to me on the extension, pointing at me and laughing his ass off.
Condolences to the Delligatti family.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:21 PM on November 30, 2016 [13 favorites]
Nah. BK always has innovative items that are completely unpalatable unless you are a child... or you like Mayo and whole-leaf lettuce on your cooked-by-fire burger.
No, seriously, you have to be somewhere between "nuggets and McDoubles are awesome!" and "I can get how many flavors of Mtn. Dew from Taco Bell???" to truly appreciate BK. Except for their chicken parm sammich, that was pure good to a pre-and-post tween.
Then I went to college in the South, and discovered the sheer might a five dollar bill could wield at Krystal in 1994...
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:25 PM on November 30, 2016
No, seriously, you have to be somewhere between "nuggets and McDoubles are awesome!" and "I can get how many flavors of Mtn. Dew from Taco Bell???" to truly appreciate BK. Except for their chicken parm sammich, that was pure good to a pre-and-post tween.
Then I went to college in the South, and discovered the sheer might a five dollar bill could wield at Krystal in 1994...
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:25 PM on November 30, 2016
This very evening I ordered a double-BigMac, hold the bun. It came on a plate, with almost no ingredient touching: a pile of 4 burger patties in one corner, pickles in another, lettuce in another, and in the 4th corner there was enough "Sauce" for half a dozen BigMacs. The sauce was topped with a single slice of cheese. I hope never to see its like again.
Godspeed you! Mac Emperor
posted by blue_beetle at 9:05 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
Godspeed you! Mac Emperor
posted by blue_beetle at 9:05 PM on November 30, 2016 [4 favorites]
I don't know which is more impressive: that he invented the Big Mac, or that he did so and somehow managed to live to be 98 years old!
Well played, sir. Well played.
.................................... - sesame seeds
posted by mosk at 9:07 PM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
Well played, sir. Well played.
.................................... - sesame seeds
posted by mosk at 9:07 PM on November 30, 2016 [7 favorites]
Kind of a big screw you to Jack LaLanne who died at 96. Fitting tale for an America not so fit.
posted by banished at 10:14 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by banished at 10:14 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
I travel a lot internationally, or at least used to. Everytime I did the first thing I did was go grab a Big Mac meal. My friends hated me, "You're where? You should try out this amazing fish leg infused snake delicacy how dare you eat McDonald's?!"
Because it's awesome, and when you're getting off a 12 hour flight you know it'll taste the same as when you're home and you won't spend the night hungry.
posted by geoff. at 10:27 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
Because it's awesome, and when you're getting off a 12 hour flight you know it'll taste the same as when you're home and you won't spend the night hungry.
posted by geoff. at 10:27 PM on November 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Big Mac. Overvalued or Undervalued? You Decide.
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:31 AM on December 1, 2016
Burgernomics was never intended as a precise gauge of currency misalignment, merely a tool to make exchange-rate theory more digestible. Yet the Big Mac index has become a global standard, included in several economic textbooks and the subject of at least 20 academic studies. For those who take their fast food more seriously, we have also calculated a gourmet version of the index.The Economist magazine's easily digestible Big Mac Index
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:31 AM on December 1, 2016
I will not (or can't) explain why, but around 2008 in southern California I impaled a BigMac in its half-opened container on the rear-mounted radio antenna of my car. Three months would pass and neither its appearance or volume appeared to change one bit.
I took a sociology course long before and had spent about a month learning a lot about McDonalds through microfiched copies of Advertising Age for an extended paper: Willard Scott had been the first clown, but was fired due to his girth (connotation of unhealthy). McDonald's was the first corporation to spend a billion dollars on advertising. It was the first to target Black Americans in the mainstream media. Which turned out to be a matter of its own study of its most habitual customers.
And then Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation made me an amateur. Love that man.
Most people balk when I describe most hamburgers as a meat pastry-- a sweetened bread bun and mayonnaise or catsup/ketchup. I suppose the pickle defeats the category, but it's a slim margin.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:53 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
I took a sociology course long before and had spent about a month learning a lot about McDonalds through microfiched copies of Advertising Age for an extended paper: Willard Scott had been the first clown, but was fired due to his girth (connotation of unhealthy). McDonald's was the first corporation to spend a billion dollars on advertising. It was the first to target Black Americans in the mainstream media. Which turned out to be a matter of its own study of its most habitual customers.
And then Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation made me an amateur. Love that man.
Most people balk when I describe most hamburgers as a meat pastry-- a sweetened bread bun and mayonnaise or catsup/ketchup. I suppose the pickle defeats the category, but it's a slim margin.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:53 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
I looked up the Filet-O-Fish guy: also dead. The sandwich that sustained Jaco Pastorius when he was with Wayne Cochran and The C.C. Riders, and it had to prove its worth against a slab of pineapple. Incredible.
posted by thelonius at 6:12 AM on December 1, 2016
posted by thelonius at 6:12 AM on December 1, 2016
One of Pittsburgh's great contributions to American cuisine.
posted by octothorpe at 6:43 AM on December 1, 2016
posted by octothorpe at 6:43 AM on December 1, 2016
Bury him in a coffin with two lids stacked up.
You jest I'm sure, but "In an unusual tribute, the ashes of a well-known Italian coffee impresario [Renato Bialetti] were placed in a giant aluminium coffee pot at his funeral"
posted by bitteroldman at 7:45 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
You jest I'm sure, but "In an unusual tribute, the ashes of a well-known Italian coffee impresario [Renato Bialetti] were placed in a giant aluminium coffee pot at his funeral"
posted by bitteroldman at 7:45 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
You jest I'm sure, but "In an unusual tribute, the ashes of a well-known Italian coffee impresario [Renato Bialetti] were placed in a giant aluminium coffee pot at his funeral"
Pringles can inventor Fredric Baur insisted on being burried in one.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:53 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Pringles can inventor Fredric Baur insisted on being burried in one.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:53 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Wikipedia: The Big Mac had two previous names, both of which failed in the marketplace: the Aristocrat, which consumers found difficult to pronounce and understand, and Blue Ribbon Burger.I want to live in a world where the Big Mac is called the Aristocrat. And also where it comes dressed in mustard or something else savory instead of cake frosting.
But, on the list of things one can do that undeniably makes people happy, this surely counts.
.
posted by eotvos at 1:51 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
"Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun."
"That's a hell of a burger, what do you call it?"
posted by radwolf76 at 2:47 PM on December 1, 2016
"That's a hell of a burger, what do you call it?"
posted by radwolf76 at 2:47 PM on December 1, 2016
I don't like Big Macs, too many vegetables.
Agreed - a fast food meal shouldn't have even the pretence of having anything in it that might not be bad for you, never mind good for you. Hence why the best burger is BK's Bacon Double Cheeseburger (XL).
posted by kersplunk at 7:22 AM on December 2, 2016
Agreed - a fast food meal shouldn't have even the pretence of having anything in it that might not be bad for you, never mind good for you. Hence why the best burger is BK's Bacon Double Cheeseburger (XL).
posted by kersplunk at 7:22 AM on December 2, 2016
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