From Guatemala, With Fries: The Happy Meal’s Secret Origin

I grew up in Guatemala, and there was always this rumor floating around that the Happy Meal came from there. I never believed it. It sounded like one of those small-town myths, something people say to feel closer to something big.

Years later I finally looked into it, and yeah, it’s true.

In the 1970s, Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño was running McDonald’s franchises in Guatemala. She saw kids struggling with the regular menu, so she built something just for them: a smaller meal, simple and thoughtful, built for little hands. No corporate playbook, no committee. Just an idea that worked.

McDonald’s in the U.S. took notice. Bob Bernstein, an ad guy, wrapped it in a box, added a toy, and turned it into a global phenomenon.

Here’s the wild part: I went to school with, I think, some of the Cofiño grandkids. I knew who they were. But no one ever bragged about it. It was just this quiet truth sitting in the background, waiting to be noticed.

And now I look at it differently. I work in branding. I know how hard it is to make something stick, to create a simple idea that people actually care about. The Happy Meal did that. It started in Guatemala and ended up everywhere, burned into culture, into childhood, into memory.

That makes me proud as hell. Proud that my home country sparked something the whole world couldn’t ignore.