Rant #1,793: Big Bad Mac

Most of us have eaten at least once something called a "Big Mac," the signature sandwich at the McDonald's restaurants chain.

(Come on, you know you have, two burgers with the special sauce, lettuce, cheese, onions, pickles, on sesame seed bun.)

The Big Mac pretty much made McDonald's what it is today, and whether you love them, hate them, or are somewhere in between, you pretty much have to agree that sometimes, something simple can actually be a bit more than that: it can be a real game changer, and that is what the Big Mac was for McDonald's and for the entire fast food industry.

McDonald’s franchisee Jim Delligatti created the Big Mac, and debuted it in the mid-1960’s at his Uniontown, Pennsylvania restaurant.  It became so successful that in 1968, it was rolled out to all McDonald’s restaurants in the United States, and later, pretty much to McDonald's around the globe.

Delligatti, who supposedly made no extra cash from his creation, passed away Monday at 98 years of age.

The businessman was supposedly a legend in the industry, also creating what became another signature of the fast food chain, its breakfast menu. Seeing hungry workers come into his restaurants after all-night shifts, he figured fast food breakfast was what they needed, and he evidently was right on with this idea too.

Delligatti is given credit for creating the Big Mac, but not for creating the name of the sandwich. Evidently, an office worker for the fast food chain is given credit for that, although the businessman claimed that he came up with that too. Reports are that he said he created the name "because 'Big Mc' didn't sound right" to his ears.

But whatever the case, Delligatti was American ingenuity personified, and every time someone purchases a Big Mac--probably hundreds of thousands of times a day, if not more than that--his creation cements itself as one of the most popular concoctions of all time.

And he listened to his customers, as they had asked him for a sandwich featuring more than one hamburger.

Look, not every fast food concoction wins out. I remember that McDonald's once had something called a Ham-O, which was probably the precursor of its successor breakfast sandwiches like the McMuffin, but the Big Mac became popular from the get go, and probably paved the way for other such sandwiches from other fast food restaurants, like Burger King's Whopper.

Whatever the case, Delligatti was the guy behind the idea, and few people outside of the industry probably knew who he was--and I bet he liked it just like that, or at least as much as people enjoyed his creation.

Speak to you again on Monday. Have a good weekend.