As reported by Business Insider, these Gold Cards are not issued by the corporate office, instead, they are given out by the owners of the individual franchises. As per The Independent, celebrities such as Rob Lowe, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates all have their own legendary ‘McGold Card.’
Unfortunately, you have to be—or know—a pretty remarkable person in order to earn one of these cards. It was on the Jimmy Kimmel Show where Rob Lowe explained how he got his card. He said that his friend’s father was the one who invented the McMuffin and thus he was given a card.
As reported by the Independent, David Peterson’s father, whose name is Herb, created the McMuffin and then co-owned a Santa Barbara, California franchise of a McDonald’s with his son. When he passed away in 2008, the fast food restaurant went to his son who then gave Rob Lowe the now famous ‘McGold Card.’ While it is nice to get free food from a restaurant, Rob is only entitled to free McDonald’s at that specific chain only.
In an interview with CNBC, Warren Buffett revealed that he and Bill Gates were both owners of the coveted card. The billionaire said: ‘there’s just a few of them, Bill Gates has one. His is good throughout the world, I guess. Mine is only good in Omaha, but I never leave Omaha so mine is just as good as his!’
The cards are also limited geographically. In an interview with Mirror Online, a McDonald’s spokesperson revealed that these golden cards are not currently available in the United Kingdom. They also went on to say: ‘individual stores will make a call on the individual, for example, a regular customer or local/national hero but there is no policy in the UK of giving away food to people and no plans to introduce it.’
The only other way to ‘earn’ a Gold Card, is to do something heroic. Charles Ramsey, the man who stopped eating his Big Mac to save three kidnapped women in May of 2013, was given a gold card for free McDonald’s at all locations for one whole year and was also given another gold card for unlimited McDonald’s food at all locations in Ohio for the rest of his life.
