Shamrock Shake
The Shamrock Shake is a shamrock-flavored milkshake offered by McDonald's to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. The milkshake is made up of shamrocks, four leaf clovers, rainbows, gold coins, the bodies of dead leprechauns and mint. It always appears at the very beginning of March, but recently, many McDonald's locations across the United States decided to offer it starting at the last week of February. McDonald's experimented with the Shamrock Shake in the 1990s by making a sundae out of it, but only a few people bought it. They did, however, put Oreos into the milkshake, and that was more popular than their sundaes.
History[edit | edit source]
The Shamrock Shake was introduced in 1967 by an Irish-American McDonald's worker. The worker in question celebrated St. Patrick's Day with his family. However, its only appearance at the time was in Connecticut simply because every other state didn't care about St. Patrick's Day at the time. 3 years later, it would debut in every single McDonald's in the United States because the holiday was getting popular there. Not only that, but everything Irish was popular at the time, so it would make sense for the Shamrock Shake to expand.
At first, the Shamrock Shake was lemon-lime flavored. Due to how the fact that the flavor didn't match what the Shamrock Shake looked like, McDonald's decided to put the bodies of dead leprechauns into the mix so that the Shamrock Shake lived up to its name. Sales of the Shamrock Shake are donated to Ronald McDonald's foundation.
They used to add cherries on top until they decided not to. In 2010, Jimmy Fallon emptied one McDonald's location's shamrock shake machine and decided to give them away to everyone in the audience. He also decided to give them to his staff as well. He did this every day until the location didn't sell any more shakes for the season. Also in the same year, they decided to dump several Shamrock Shakes into the Chicago River in March.
Expansion[edit | edit source]
The Shamrock Shake eventually made its way to Canada because there is a lot of Irish people there. However, after 50 years, the shake would also make its way into Ireland as well. It is surprising how McDonald's took so long to give away the Shamrock Shake to the Irish. 5 years later, in 2025, the UK would also get the Shamrock Shake, which is also surprising as well since most of the people that live there are Irish or are partially Irish. Australia and New Zealand would later get the shake as well.
The only time that the Shamrock Shake would make its way into other countries is if the country in question has a large Irish diaspora.
