The Company Behind McDonald's Famous Apple Pies

Alongside the Big Mac, the McMuffin, and the beloved but only sporadically available McRib, McDonald's apple pies are arguably among its most iconic menu items. Since becoming the chain's very first dessert option back in 1968, the global fast food monolith's apple pie has gone through multiple incarnations and controversies. Throughout it all, the apple pie has been supplied to McDonald's by the same family-run Southern enterprise, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Bama Companies.   

The connection between Bama Companies and the McDonald's apple pie takes some unravelling. In the 1920s, Cornelia Alabama Marshall initially sold her homemade sweet potato pies at a local drugstore in Dallas. However, when her husband became unemployed due to the Great Depression, she began selling smaller pies door-to-door, laying the foundation for what would become the Bama Pie Company. Following World War II, Cornelia's son Paul Marshall noted the increase in people eating in their cars, and suggested the company produce a pie fit for this purpose.

Despite Cornelia's pie-making prowess, the actual recipe for the McDonald's apple pie came not from within Bama, but from a married couple from Knoxville, Tennessee, Litton and Jo Cochran, who had opened the city's first McDonald's franchise in 1960. Aware that Ray Kroc, the businessman key to turning McDonald's into a fast food empire, was searching for a dessert to add to the menu, Litton suggested the Southern favorite fried apple pie. The Cochrans spent several months developing the recipe, experimenting with different fillings, spices, and crusts, until they finally settled on a pie they were happy to present to Kroc. Thereafter, Bama became McDonald's go-to producer for the pies, and continues to fill this role today. 

McDonald's apple pies have long inspired strong opinions — even we think that the modern recipe makes it arguably the worst fast food dessert pie on offer, thanks to the decline in quality over the years. In fact, there was a time when it was claimed that the McDonald's apple pie was actually unsafe — the notoriously hot contents of the pie actually spurred a lawsuit in 1995, when British man Darren Miles sued McDonald's after his arm was scalded by the pie's filling, leading to a settlement of £750. 

Arguably, the biggest controversy surrounding the McDonald's apple pie was the fast food chain's decision to switch from producing fried to baked pies in 1992. While this may have been in response to a growing public desire for healthier options, some still pine nostalgically for the more indulgent fried apple pies of yore, which as of 2023 were only still served in two U.S. states – so much so you can find copycat recipes online that seek to recreate them. Nevertheless, the McDonald's apple pie continues to evolve, most recently in 2018, when Bama committed to phasing out artificial flavorings or any ingredients McDonald's customers might not recognize. According to current Bama CEO Paula Marshall, after taste-testing the new recipe with hundreds of people, the new pie was preferred 2:1 over the old one.

The McDonald's apple pie remains a favorite within the company that makes it as well. Asked what her favorite flavor of pie was in a 2025 video on Instagram, Marshall declared, "Of course, it has to be apple," noting that it was the "cornerstone of Bama's relationship with McDonald's."