What was McDonald's restaurant called before the company shortened its name to McDonald's?

Before the name was shortened, the restaurant was called McDonald’s Famous Bar-B-Q.

Maurice and Richard McDonald opened their first drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California, in 1940. It originally served a broad barbecue-oriented menu under the McDonald’s Famous Bar-B-Q name.

In 1948, the brothers closed the restaurant temporarily and reopened it with a much smaller menu centered on hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, milkshakes, and soft drinks. The new operating system emphasized speed and self-service, and the branding was shortened to McDonald’s.

The earlier name is often overlooked because the later McDonald’s identity became globally dominant. It also should not be confused with McDonald’s Bar-B-Q, a separate description of the original menu concept. The 1948 change was both a business repositioning and a branding simplification.