FAIRMONT — This is the fast-food jingle you know, even if you don’t know it.
“Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun …”
It was the musical recipe for the Big Mac, the multi-decker sandwich sensation from the McDonald’s ad campaign that went viral in 1974 — or, what passed for viral 50 years ago — when the commercials featuring it were unleashed on TV and radio.
Kids sang the jingle on the playground at recess.
Their moms and dads did the same (tried to, anyway) at the McDonald’s counter, where, if they could rattle it off — fast, with no flubs — they could get a free Big Mac.
Meanwhile, Jim Delligatti’s birthday is Aug. 2.
And, if you’re so inclined, you might even want to consider singing the above ditty in his honor, instead of that other tune people normally summon to celebrate the yearly trip around the sun.
Who’s Jim Delligatti, you ask?
In the McDonald’s pantheon, Delligatti, who was 98 when he died in 2016, is still a star with a light that shines like the Golden Arches.
That’s what the guy who was born in Uniontown, Pa., and grew up in Fairmont gets for inventing the Big Mac.
McDonald’s next week will host International Big Mac Day on the occasion of his birth with a special price on Delligatti’s signature sandwich.
First, though, some burger-backstory.
Burger beginnings
Delligatti was born Aug. 2, 1918, in Uniontown, Pa., and spent his boyhood and teen years in Fairmont.
The McDonald’s franchisee came up with the Big Mac in 1967, when he finally convinced the burger brass that such an offering would work — even if it did clock in at 45 cents.
That’s $4.23 in today’s dollars.
Before the Big Mac, a regular burger cost 18 cents ($1.67 in 2024 prices), and the chain feared customers wouldn’t pay for a sandwich costing two-and-a-half more times than anything else on the menu.
“Actually, I wanted to do a big sandwich a couple of years before that, but they wouldn’t let me,” he told Fairmont newspaperman John Veasey during a visit to his hometown in 2007.
So, he went ahead and did it anyway, offering his own field test for his customers of the McDonald’s he was running in Uniontown then.
“I knew it was gonna be good,” he said.
That’s because he knew fast food.
Adventure — to go
Delligatti knocked around a bit after his graduation from Fairmont Senior High School in 1936, picking up any job he could get in a town still reeling from the Depression.
In 1942, at the height of World War II, he got his draft notice and soon shipped out for the fighting in Europe.
Fairmont didn’t hold much for him after he got back, so he hitchhiked to Southern California, drawn by America’s post-war boom.
He ended up working in restaurants there. He liked the business.
He liked the food preparation, the marketing and the interaction with customers, especially.
After a while, he boomeranged back to this side of the country, where he and a buddy started their own version of a SoCal drive-in burger joint in Pittsburgh.
He stopped by the McDonald’s booth at a restaurant trade show in Chicago in 1955 and struck up a conversation with Ray Kroc. He ended up making a career under the arches.
Delligatti and his family would go on to operate several McDonald’s franchises in the Pittsburgh area.
One in North Huntingdon, around 20 miles from Pittsburgh, even houses, with corporate blessing, an official “Big Mac Museum” — complete with a 14-foot sculpture of the sandwich.
“Yeah, as you can hear we’re pretty busy,” John, a manager who only gave his first name, chuckled over the morning din, as customers came in for breakfast — which, coincidentally, Delligatti also pioneered for the chain.
Just as many others come for the museum, the manager said. Bus tours are especially popular.
Two all-beef patties (again) …
Then there’s the aforementioned International Big Mac Day on Aug. 2.
It’s actually a celebration running July 29-Aug. 11, during which customers may purchase $2 Big Macs exclusively through the MyMcDonalds Rewards app.
Look for that app to be in overdrive, as the corporation already reports annual sales of 550 million Big Macs in America alone.
The sandwich is also sold at franchises in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Delligatti went worldwide, also, following his death eight years ago at his home in suburban Pittsburgh.
His obituary appeared in media outlets from Alabama to Australia.
And, he was true to the brand.
The man who was pushing 100 still enjoyed one Big Mac a week — right up to the end.
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