McDonald’s feeds more people than anyone in the world. Every day, 7.5% of Americans take a break at McDonald’s.
And now they’re looking to try and give fans more of what they want.
That’s why McDonald’s is making a major menu addition to its classic burgers that will have fans screaming, “I’m lovin’ it.”
McDonald’s looking to make its hamburgers better and even bigger
The hamburger is one of the most iconic and popular meals across the nation, and the world.
You can find hamburgers in just about every restaurant that exists and they are all in competition over selling the beef patty.
Even fast-food King, McDonald’s, is facing fierce competition these days from fast-food rivals like Wendy’s, Burger King, and Sonic.
And so-called fast-casual chains selling them, like Five Guys, Smashburger, and Shake Shack, are on the rise.
And casual restaurants, like Chili’s Grill and Bar, have now introduced lower-priced hamburgers designed to compete with fast food franchises.
So now McDonald’s is looking to make some big changes to its famous hamburgers in the hope of stopping the bleeding of customers.
On a recent earnings call with investors, McDonald’s Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden announced that a bigger hamburger was coming.
“As we look to further build on our leadership in beef, our team of chefs from around the world have created a larger satiating burger,” Borden said. “We’ll be testing this burger in a few markets later this year ensuring that it has universal appeal before scaling it across the globe.”
McDonald’s had said earlier this year that sales of its chicken sandwiches and McNuggets were running neck-and-neck with its hamburgers, selling about $25 billion a year each.
The fast-food giant didn’t offer any additional information about what these new larger hamburgers would look like.
Currently, the largest hamburger on the McDonald’s menu is the Double Quarter Pounder.
In the past, the chain has experimented with larger hamburgers.
The Double Big Mac – which features two more hamburger patties and extra Big Mac sauce – has had several limited-time runs.
But McDonald’s has mostly kept its hamburger lineup the same in recent years with just a few limited-time-only releases like the Smoky BLT Quarter Pounder and the Cheesy Jalapeño Bacon Quarter Pounder.
These additions didn’t really make changes to the burgers, they just added a few items to the classic Quarter Pounder.
Borden said earlier this year that the chain has tried in the past to get a “premium” burger off of the ground, but nothing has ever worked.
The Arch Deluxe was released as a premium burger in 1996.
This burger had a quarter-pound patty, a circular piece of bacon, leaf lettuce, tomato, American cheese, onions, ketchup, and a special blend of mustard and mayonnaise.
It tested well but then became a major flop.
“We tried to get after this opportunity for a number of years because we thought the opportunity was about premium burgers,” Borden said.
He said that making the hamburgers bigger without changing the ingredients was the solution.
McDonald’s getting ready for a hamburger street fight
Major fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Starbucks, KFC, and Pizza Hut have all had lower-than-expected sales.
Inflation-battered consumers have less money to spend on fast food and chains are fighting over fewer customers.
“Clearly everybody’s fighting for fewer consumers or consumers that are certainly visiting less frequently, and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got that street-fighting mentality to win, [regardless] of the context around us,” Borden said.
A Restaurant Business study found that the average price of a McDonald’s cheeseburger nationally has skyrocketed by 55% over the last three years.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said that the chain had lost its advantage on value.
“In some markets, our relative superiority on affordability has declined,” Kempczinski stated.
A bigger hamburger could be the key to bringing customers back to McDonald’s.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
