What Is the History of the Cheeseburger?

The history of the cheeseburger is better documented than you might expect, given how ubiquitous the dish has become today. Like most food innovations, it has a specific origin — one that is actually better documented than the hamburger itself — and a specific moment when it became part of mainstream food culture.

The History of the Cheeseburger Begins in Pasadena

Most historians attribute the cheeseburger’s origin to Lionel Sternberger, a teenager working at his father’s sandwich shop in Pasadena, California, called The Rite Spot. Around 1924–1926, Sternberger reportedly added a slice of American cheese to a hamburger on the griddle as an experiment. Customers liked the result enough that it became a menu item, and the Rite Spot began advertising it as the “Aristocratic Hamburger.”

However, a competing claim comes from Kaelin’s restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, which says it invented the cheeseburger in 1934. This account carries less documentation than the Sternberger story, so historical culinary researchers generally credit the California origin as the more likely first instance.

The trademark: Denver, Colorado, 1935

Whatever the first instance, Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In in Denver, Colorado, first registered the word “cheeseburger” as a trademark in 1935. In practice, nobody enforced the trademark widely, since the format was already spreading too quickly, but it still represents the first formal commercial recognition of the cheeseburger as a distinct menu item.

Why American cheese became the standard

In the early years of the cheeseburger, restaurants used various cheeses. But American processed cheese — James Kraft developed it in the 1910s — became the dominant choice for a specific functional reason: it melts consistently, evenly, and at relatively low temperatures. Natural cheeses, by contrast, vary significantly in their melting behaviour depending on their fat content, age, and protein structure. American cheese, which manufacturers make by blending natural cheese with emulsifying salts, produces a reliably smooth, even melt every time. For a high-volume, fast-cook environment like a burger restaurant, that consistency was decisive.

In short, the dominance of American cheese in burgers is not purely a matter of taste — it is a matter of performance under specific cooking conditions.

The fast-food era: globalisation of the cheeseburger

The cheeseburger became a global phenomenon largely through the expansion of American fast-food chains. McDonald’s, which began franchising nationally in 1953 and internationally from the 1960s onward, was the primary vehicle. The McDonald’s Cheeseburger became arguably the most widely eaten version of the format in the world — a stripped-back, standardised version that prioritised consistency and speed over culinary distinction.

By the 1980s and 1990s, the cheeseburger was available in virtually every country on earth, primarily through fast-food chains. In fact, its association with American fast food became so strong that the craft burger movement — which began in earnest in the early 2000s — partially defined itself in opposition to that fast-food standard, applying fine-dining technique and quality sourcing to a format that mass production had pushed almost beyond recognition.

The craft cheeseburger today

Today, the cheeseburger exists across an enormous quality range, from the $1 fast-food version to the carefully crafted version at a serious burger restaurant. The format is the same: beef patty, cheese, bun. What varies is everything that goes into making each component well — the sourcing of the beef, the selection of the cheese for its melt and flavour characteristics, the quality of the bun, and the technique applied to bring them together.