McDonald’s uses one teaspoonful of diced onion in each Big Mac. The former vitamin helps in blood clotting and ensures healthy bones, while the latter has a myriad of health benefits. Being a vegetable, lettuce compliments the taste of the burger and adds vitamins K and A. McDonald’s uses 28g (about an ounce) of shredded lettuce in the preparation of the Big Mac. Up until 2018, it contained artificial ingredients such as potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, but the food giant removed them to make the sauce safer and healthier. So, what does this special sauce contain?Īccording to McDonald’s, it consists of the following ingredients: However, the food giant quickly thwarted those claims, pointing out that the speci a l ingredients of the sauce aren’t really “special” because they’re readily available in local groceries. Such is the sauce’s remarkable taste that, for many years, it’s been touted as McDonald’s secret weapon in the food industry. It adds a special sweet-and-sour taste to the burger that your everyday ketchup simply can’t provide. There are many “special sauces” out there, but the one in the Mac lives up to its name. And since the beef in the Mac is lean, you get these all-important nutrients while keeping your consumption of saturated fats low. Including beef ensures that you get an adequate serving of essential body nutrients such as iron, which boosts your body immunity and prevents anemia and zinc, which improves your metabolic functions. If you don’t know what a patty is, it’s a flattened round piece of minced meat or its alternatives. McDonald’s uses two 1.6 oz (45.4g) beef patties in one Big Mac hamburger. Now let’s take a look at each ingredient in greater detail.
So without further ado, let’s take a quick look at both. To estimate how much it costs McDonald’s to make one Big Mac, you need to understand the costs associated with the cooking process and the cost of the individual ingredients. What Exactly Determines the Cost of Making the Big Mac? In the rest of this article, we’ll explore the most relevant determinants of the cost of making a Big Mac to help you find out whether it would be cheaper to make one on your own.
Keep in mind that this figure may vary by geographical location due to the different prices of goods and services around the world. The same burger would cost about $6 to make at home if you sum up the individual costs of the ingredients. “The wage increase in 2015 - to be a $1 above the local minimum wage - was applicable to the local wages on July 1, 2015, but was not a policy thereafter,” the fast food chain said in a statement.Ever wondered whether it’d be cheaper to make the delicious McDonald’s Big Mac at home than buying from one of their outlets?Įxcluding labor, one Big Mac costs McDonald’s about $0.77 to make in the US. As a result, the company said, they would make an average of $10 an hour.īut three years later, Fight for 15 accused McDonald’s of lying to workers and released pay stubs showing that workers in eight different cities were making between 40 and 70 cents above their local minimum. In April 2015, McDonald’s announced that it would implement a wage increase for 90,000 workers at its 1,500 company-owned restaurants in the U.S the chain said that as of 1 July of that year, employees would earn at least $1 more than the local minimum wage. We contacted McDonald’s seeking comment, but the restaurant chain has yet to respond. Web sites like and, which aggregate companies’ salary information, reported that the average salary for a McDonald’s employee is around $9 per hour. Department of Labor, 29 states currently have minimum wages higher than the federal standard of $7.25 an hour. For its part, the Australian government’s Fair Work Ombudsman states that the minimum wage there is $18.29 Australian, equivalent to $13.64 American dollars.Īccording to the U.S. However, a French government states on its web site that the country’s minimum wage is 9.88 Euro, equivalent to $11.71 U.S. The group also based its findings on a Wikipedia page listing minimum wages in 193 countries. Fight for 15, which has campaigned for the company to both institute a minimum wage of $15 per hour across the board and allow workers to unionize, also noted that it based its Big Mac prices on the “Big Mac index,” a currency-comparison guide published by The Economist compiling average prices for the burger at McDonald’s locations in various countries to “make exchange-rate theory more digestible” for readers.