Michael James Delligatti, Creator of the Big Mac, Dies at 98

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  BUSINESS DAY
  Michael James Delligatti, Creator of the Big Mac, Dies at 98
  By WILLIAM GRIMESNOV. 30, 2016
  
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  • early television commercial, unseen hands slowly assembled a Big Mac as an actor in a beige suit explained each ingredient. Hoyt Axton, in a 1969 commercial, sang “The Ballad of Big Mac.”
    
    Most memorable was the ad campaign, begun in 1974, in which actual customers tried to recite the ingredients in a Big Mac, with comic results, before a chorus jumped in and smoothly sang the now-famous jingle.
    
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    The original ad for Big Macs in Uniontown, Pa., 1967.CreditMcDonald's
    “It wasn’t like discovering the light bulb,” Mr. Delligatti told John F. Love, the author of “McDonald’s: Behind the Arches” (1986). “The bulb was already there. All I did was screw it in the socket.”
    
    Michael James Delligatti was born on Aug. 2, 1918, in Uniontown. His father, James, held a variety of jobs, from farrier to candy maker, and the family moved often. His mother, the former Lucille Dandrea, was a homemaker.
    
    After graduating from Fairmont High School in West Virginia, Mr. Delligatti held a variety of jobs before entering the Army in 1942. He served in Europe with the 26th Infantry Division, known as the Yankee Division.
    
    He worked a succession of odd jobs on returning home before hitchhiking to Southern California, where he worked at several drive-in restaurants and managed a Big Boy, whose feature hamburger with special sauce made an impression.
    
    In 2012, a corporate chef for McDonald’s demonstrated, in a video, how to make the Big Mac Special Sauce, using mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish, yellow mustard, white wine vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.
    
    In 1953, Mr. Delligatti and a friend, John Sweeney, combined their last names and opened a drive-in restaurant in Pittsburgh, Delney’s.
    
    While attending a restaurant trade show in Chicago in 1955, Mr. Delligatti became interested in the McDonald’s booth. He then visited a new McDonald’s in Illinois.
    
    He became one of the company’s earliest franchisees, opening a McDonald’s in Pittsburgh in 1957. He went on to open 47 more over the next 25 years.
    
    Along the way, he began serving a hot breakfast to local steelworkers coming off the night shift. As with the Big Mac, the Hotcakes and Sausage Meal became part of the national McDonald’s menu.
    
    The Big Mac remains his legacy, celebrated in song and story. In 1986, The Economist introduced its Big Mac Index, which shows whether a currency is overvalued or undervalued based on the cost of a Big Mac in one country relative to the cost in another.
    
    With backing from McDonald’s, Mr. Delligatti opened the Big Mac Museum Restaurant in North Huntingdon, Pa., in 2007,with a 14-foot-tall Big Mac sculpture as its centerpiece.
    
    In addition to his son Michael, Mr. Delligatti is survived by his wife, the former Eleanor Carmody, known as Ellie; another son, James; five grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
    
    Last week, McDonald’s began testing two new versions of the Big Mac in Texas and central Ohio: a Mac Jr. and a supersize Grand Mac. Big Mac, in other words, might become Middle Mac. But the sales remain huge, leading many to believe that Mr. Delligatti, as its inventor, must have reaped a windfall worth billions.
    
    Not so. “All I got was a plaque,” he told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2007.
    
    A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2016, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Michael James Delligatti, 98, Creator of the Big Mac and Its ‘Special Sauce’. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe