The Big Mac Made A Fortune For McDonald's While The Creator Got McSnubbed

It's hard to imagine a time when the Big Mac wasn't on the Golden Arches' menu, but the iconic McDonald's burger officially debuted in 1968, nearly 30 years after brothers Dick and Mac McDonald first opened their drive-in restaurant. The sandwich was the brainchild of then-franchisee Jim Delligatti, who wanted a large sandwich that could compete with Burger King's Whopper. The Big Mac would eventually become one of the chain's most recognizable products — and its inventor would never see a cent from it.

According to a 2016 story in The Atlantic, Delligatti first devised what would become the Big Mac in 1967 after securing permission from McDonald's to test it out using only ingredients that were available in the restaurant's kitchens. He immediately broke the agreement by using sesame seed buns from a local baker — the first time McDonald's would ever use them. He also came up with the Big Mac's signature special sauce, likely inspired by the condiment that Big Boy restaurants put on their burgers (via The New York Times). His gambit paid off; the sandwich turned out to be so successful that Delligatti's locations went from being the lowest-selling stores to the top-selling ones. McDonald's would roll out the burger nationwide a year later.

One might think that he would get handsomely rewarded for helping put McDonald's on the map, but that wasn't the case. Speaking with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2007, Delligatti said that all he got for his game-changing invention was a plaque. He died in 2016 at the age of 98.

One story that doesn't come up as often as Jim Delligatti's is that of Esther Glickstein Rose, without whom the Big Mac could have had a completely different name. Rose came up with the sandwich's iconic moniker while working as an advertising secretary for McDonald's. In a 2014 interview with CBS News, Rose shared that she thought of the name immediately after hearing a description of the burger. At the time, the company was also considering calling it "The Aristocrat" or the "The Blue Ribbon Burger," and she wasn't fond of either option.

As Rose told the story, she wasn't even informed the company decided to go with her suggestion until she saw it on a McDonald's menu one day. She would later receive a letter from the legal department confirming she had named the Big Mac, and like Delligatti, she never received any money for her massive contribution to McDonald's history. An Associated Press report says that she finally received a plaque and a thank-you message from McDonald's in 1985 (accessed via Archive.org).

When it comes to marketing a product, a catchy name (or lack thereof) can determine whether it'll be a success. Would the Big Mac have become one of the best McDonald's items of all time if it had been called The Aristocrat instead? The decision to go with the name Rose chose suggests the chain didn't think so. The fact that she never received more than a plaque is as big of a snub as Deliigatti got.