The Big Mac gave McDonald's a signature branded product that became central to its 1968 advertising.
Franchisee Jim Delligatti created the sandwich in 1967 at a Pittsburgh-area McDonald's because customers wanted a larger hamburger. It used two beef patties, a middle bun layer, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions and sauce. McDonald's introduced it nationally in 1968, making the name part of the chain's permanent product vocabulary.
The sandwich's branding mattered as much as its recipe. The short, memorable name was easy to say, print and build into jingles and signs. McDonald's later used the Big Mac as a benchmark for international pricing comparisons, while the product remained visually tied to the company's red-and-yellow packaging.
The Big Mac is sometimes credited to McDonald's headquarters as an original invention. Delligatti, however, was a franchise operator whose local experiment was adopted system-wide. That franchise-to-corporation path is a recurring feature of McDonald's product history.