National Hamburger Day on May 28th wraps up National Burger Month and also ushers in summer grilling season.
- The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, Germany‘s second-largest city. In German, Burg means “castle”, “fortified settlement” or “fortified refuge” and is a widespread component of place names.
- The exact origin of the hamburger may never be known with any certainty.
- The Library of Congress credits Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant, owner of Louis’ Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut as the creator of the hamburger as we know it.
- New Haven’s Louis Lunch, where the burger was born, only serves onions, tomatoes, and cheese spread as a condiment – maintaining a ban on ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise!
- The hamburger gained national recognition at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair when the New York Tribune referred to the hamburger as “the innovation of a food vendor on the pike”.
- White Castle is the oldest burger chain in America. It was started in 1921 by Walter A. Anderson and E.W. Ingram who sold their burgers for 5 cents apiece.
- On average, Americans eat three hamburgers a week. That’s a national total of nearly 50 billion burgers per year.
- If all the hamburgers eaten by Americans in a year are arranged in a straight line, it would circle our Earth 32 times or more!
- McDonald’s Corporation is the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries.
- According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the hamburger was first abbreviated to burger in 1939.
- The Hamburger Hall of Fame is located in Seymour, Wisconsin.
- 60% of sandwiches sold globally are actually burgers
- In 2008, Burger King released a meat-scented cologne called “Flame.”
- The Economist has an indicator of the purchasing power of a country measured in how many Big Macs could be bought in that country with $50 USD – The Big Mac Index.
- The Big Mac had two previous names: “aristocrat” and “blue ribbon burger”, both of which failed in the marketplace.
- During WWI, the US Gov’t tried to rename hamburgers as ‘liberty sandwiches.’
- Hamburgers along with cheeseburgers account for 71% of beef served in commercial hotels in the US.
- McDonald’s sells 75 or more burgers every second.
- Hamburger (ground beef patty) is the most popular food for the grill, followed by steak and chicken.
- More than seven of every ten burgers (73% or 9.6 billion) consumed in the U.S. were prepared and purchased outside of the home.
- The world’s largest hamburger was 2,566 lb – 9 oz and was achieved in Pilsting, Germany, on 9 July 2017.
- In Wisconsin’s Seymour, there is something known as the Hamburger Hall of Fame!
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