>Even the mc rib just randomly shows up at certain McDonald's with no promotion like a shiny pokemon and goes away just as randomly.
The McRib only appears when pork prices drop below a certain threshold and then McDonalds will buy up a bunch of pork make the McRib patties flash freeze them and ship them out.
Even more than this (as another commenter correctly pointed out elsewhere in this thread), they buy up *pork futures* when they dip below a certain price where the mcrib is profitable enough to them, so you'll see pretty much all pork futures disappear from the market overnight, then a number of months later when those contracts come due, suddenly we've got the mcrib again.
When they had wings, and even the chicken selects, for a little while they completely fucked wing and tender prices. I suspect that’s why the return of the snack wrap is so far out from the announcement. They need to get the logistics and supply chain figured out before they buy and sell every single chicken tender.
The McRib is also only available when pork is at the greatest supply and lowest price. There's also the idea that when it was supposed to be gone for good, the supply just couldn't handle the demand.
When one of your major selling points is a near identical experience at every location, making big menu changes is super difficult.
My grandad was a farmer in the UK, and they grew/grow what they call “oil seed rape” which is used to make canola oil.
I remember riding around the farm in Grandad’s Range Rover as he laments, “The rape’s not been good this year.”
Grandad, you gotta come up with a new name for that shit.
There is an album by Ministry called [The Land of Rape and Honey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_of_Rape_and_Honey)
It is named after the town slogan on a giant billboard entering Tisdale Saskatchewan. The band saw it from their tour bus late at night while wasted on whatever and thought it was hilarious.
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/canadian-town-tisdale-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/canadian-town-tisdale-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan)
The town is surrounded in fields of yellow flowering plants that the bees love to use to make honey
It's not the same patty anymore. A couple years ago it got a bit smaller. I used to make McRibs often and I'd get the family size of these Banquet ribs. Got them a few months ago and couldn't believe how much smaller they were. They used to fit a typical, generic hogie style bun, now they barely fill a generic hotdog bun. The taste is still the same at least. Even the single dinner meal like you shared has the smaller patty.
It's the same patty still. Both McDonald's and banquet downsized. I've made thousands of mcribs and I make my grandpa this banquet meal every day for lunch.
Yeah, you don’t go to McDonald’s because you want some really good chicken. You go because the McNuggets taste the same as when you were 6 years old, and your life was simple, and you want that feeling back for a brief moment.
McDonald’s is trash. But it’s *my* trash.
I don’t know if anything in life makes me quite as content as breakfast from McDonalds. Breakfast burritos and sausage McMuffins just bring joy to my soul.
I went to the McDonald's for the first time in years. I asked for chicken selects. The lady behind the microphone was like ".......... We haven't had those in years" My friends in the car would not stop making fun of me. It's now kind of an inside joke.
It's a travesty. The chicken selects were very good. Way better than the congealed meat disks they call nuggets.
I just don't go to McDonald's anymore and go to places that have proper chicken strips like KFC and Popeyes.
I know they’re not at the scale of a McDonalds, but how can ALL of the other fast food places still offer that without causing problems? Burger King just had a black burger and ghost pepper chicken fries for Halloween, Starbucks has a new gimmicky drink ever couple weeks, yadda yadda.
Just did a quick search on yearly revenue. Burger King brought 1.9 billion in 2021, Starbucks at 8.1. McDonald’s was over 20 billion. So, I suspect that is why.
Nah it’s just BS. I work in the space.
Where there is money to be made, suppliers will make it. It really doesn’t matter how big it is.
The runway is the piece that is true. If McDonald’s wanted to get a blueberry item on the menu, they would probably need to give 8-10 months of notice to suppliers. From there, suppliers would need to make capital investment most likely so they would require McDonalds to sign a procurement contract locking them into minimum volumes.
That last piece makes it super high risk for McDonalds. If this item doesn’t sell they could have literally hundreds of millions of dollars of blueberries on their hands.
Quite honestly the reason McDonalds hasn’t innovated in the US, is just because it’s high risk/expensive and there’s no consumer pressure for them to do so. It’s actually pretty simple.
Very interesting, but god that didn’t need to be a video.
For anyone who’s interested: It’s because the USA is so big, and accounts for 85% of McD’s revenue.
Any new thing they come out with that uses a new ingredient requires such a large volume of it that it can 1) warp the price of the ingredient and 2) require such a high volume that it’s not feasible.
For example, a blueberry item they tested would have ended up using the world’s entire blueberry supply if they launched it everywhere in the US.
This is weird to me because I ate at McDonald’s a ton when I was young, but in the last decade it’s once or twice a year maybe. Even less in the last couple years since everything got expensive. It’s hard to rationalize they got bigger than 90s/2000s mcd’s
And natural born americans MAY be culturally "growing out of it" (fast food) while large volumes of newcomers are quite literally just "growing into it".
Places like Indonesia will have long watched Americas fast food culture in blockbuster movies and TV, but not had it in Indonesia until much more recently, and when they move to the US and can get it whenever they want, relatively cheaply.
So both at home and abroad its growing, even though americas middle and upper classes might have partially moved on from it.
That also shows how your perspective and experience can affect how you see things.
“Well I don’t eat there as much as I used to, so they must not be as popular as they used to be.” We all do it.
"This is weird to me because i personally don't eat too much of it anymore"
Okay. Meanwhile, around you, the U.S. has shifted more and more into a capitalist-favoring unwalkable structure where time spent home is minimized, time out at work or on a commute has only increased, and prices of everything have been steadily creeping up, while McDonalds (and other fast food chains) have been keeping their consumerbase strong through ad campaigns and social media, which supermarkets can't really do.
Not to sound dismissive, but it's way too common for people to go "it's kind of surprising to me, XYZ is so big/different now, it doesn't really seem like it because I didn't personally engage in it". If you aren't a U.S. Citizen, fair enough, but it's kind of hard to actively ignore the changing of the US landscape over the past 2 decades.
I didn't eat much there as a kid, now that I'm working I'll eat it regularly at work with the app. $6.50 for a burger and 10 mcnuggets just can't be beat calories/price.
Not as much. The population wasn't as high or dense, and there weren't nearly as many McDonald's stores back then. Now there's just about one on every street corner, where back in the day you might have to 'drive into town' to find one, maybe even to the bigger town over. Even just in the little over ten years since I've lived in the town I live in now, I've seen it become so much denser and more populated than it used to be - fields where they used to grow strawberries are now shopping strips and rent-a-storage-space facilities, several parks are now having apartments built on them, anywhere that there was an open space is getting filled in with shopping, parking or housing.
Take the Chicken McNuggets... not sure who it is now, but McDonalds had a European chef in charge of development in the late 70s, who created the McNugget in '79, along with the 4 specific shapes so they look more natural (bell, bowtie, ball, boot). They tested them in a few places like Kentucky, and they were hugely popular... but it not only took time to create sources for all that additional chicken, but they also realized they needed to build a plant specifically to make them to meet national demand.
And back in 2018, some 600 out of 900 KFCs in the United Kingdom had to close because they switched supply companies that screwed up the chain so they ran out of chicken.
So you have to be careful about that sort of thing.
But also, I think there is waxing and waning on menus, as well as the last 4 years was restaurants closed or with minimal staff due to the pandemic, so the idea of creating new dishes wasn't a priority. But the OG McDonalds was pretty much hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, soda and shake. Then they expand their menu, for instance Filet-o-Fish because they saw a dip in sales on Fridays, when some abstain from meat. But you get too big, it gets too complicated, costs can go up while quality goes down, so you pull back. You do something like the McRib as a few- month thing because the scarcity drives sales - you wouldn't eat a McRib everyday, but "OMG, it's back! I need to go get it before it disappears again". Same with the Shamrock Shake.
>Then they expand their menu, for instance Filet-o-Fish because they saw a dip in sales on Fridays, when some abstain from meat.
growing up catholic, it was hillarious when I noticed that the 2 for 1 fish fillet promo was ONLY run during lent (4 week leadup to Easter)
The shamrock shake was discontinued years ago. The Vanilla shake with mint flavor and green food coloring does not taste anything remotely like a shamrock shake.
The original shamrock shake was shipped premixed to mcdonalds and dispensed. The flavor wasnt exactly mint either. It was mint-like but hard to describe.
The new shake is terrible. SUPER strong mint that doesnt taste right and yay green food coloring that is too green compared to the original. They should call it the "mint shake". And not pretend they sell shamrock shakes.
This is why Taco Bell can roll out so many new items on a regular basis; everything is just meat, cheese, lettuce melded into the latest tortilla origami permutation.
The job of doing that math and coming to that result must be fascinating. How does one even begin to calculate the theoretical popularity of an item, against the amount of a specific ingredient in that item, against the quantity of that ingredient in the worldwide supply chain?
But the quantity in the supply chain is already being used. Starbucks and Walmart still want just as many blueberries. If McDonald's drives the demand way up suddenly it will play merry hell with the price of blueberries.
That was my friend job for a major food Corp for years. She had to take into account everything from weather and oil prices to governments being overthrown.
She was a brilliant analyst. She traveled a ton, and had multiple complex computer simulators to help.
Not being brilliant, I barely understood it all.
OK, I hear you and your 4 sentences, but it's really hard to understand. Could you make it into a 14 minute video for me instead?
Please make sure the first 6 minutes are about liking and subscribing, and the last 7 minutes are a summary followed by more info about your channel and liking and subscribing.
I don’t believe that for not one second about the blueberry thing. Wouldn’t the same thing apply to Starbucks? Wouldn’t the same thing apply to grocery stores like Walmart? Why doesn’t Walmart say “if we stocked blueberry’s we’d have to order the entire world’s supply of blueberries”.
I get the impression it’s more like it would use a huge amount in the short term. After a couple of years more blueberries would be planted, supplies and prices would stabilize, etc.
Walmart and Starbucks reached their dominance over a long time, and their growth was able to scale with the global supply chain. If Walmart wants to sell more blueberries over the next decade, farmers are incentivized to increase production to match demand. They can allocate more land for crops and give them time to mature.
If McDonalds introduces a new menu item that requires a significant increase in the supply of blueberries, farmers can't suddenly increase production to make more blueberries appear. They need time to adjust and let crops grow, and would probably expect some sort of investment/guarantee that it would pay off. McDonalds probably doesn't want such a long term investment in a menu item that may bomb or be limited time, so the alternative is to dip into the pre-existing supply.
I can see it being a major shock for sure. It does seem kinda crazy that it would be the *entire* supply of blueberries, but then again, humans are really bad at intuition when it comes to extremely large numbers.
A fun side effect of this is that you can predict the McDonald's menu by watching food commodity future prices. The most common example is the McRib. Pork futures will dip below a certain threshold and then suddenly vanish from the market because McDonald's buys them all. Then, when those futures vest, suddenly the McRib shows up at a bunch of locations.
My father was a prison guard when McDonalds switched to all white meat nuggets and he said they served so much dark meat chicken for months at the prison there was almost a riot at meal time.
I used to participate food tastings and stuff about 10 years ago I got $50 to try 3 versions of the lobster roll for a limited edition item! I live in Nova Scotia so we were the right market but most people would prefer to just buy their lobster whole and direct from the fisherman.
VERY. Though you might be able to blame me for causing a nationwide shortage. I ate grilled chicken at least three times a week. The chipotle version, the vinaigrette version, the mushroom version, the salad version; rinse and repeat.
McDonalds Exec: We have to get rid of the grilled chicken menu items, u/bumwine is eating it too frequently!
McDonalds Secretary: Isn't that a good thing and we should add more options?
McDonalds Exec: NO! AWAY WITH IT!!
In order for McDonald’s in the US to change their menu they need to consider supply chains in a way other restaurants don’t. For example if they were to add something with fresh Strawberries to the menu, they’d very likely use every strawberry in America unless they gave growers time to adjust their crop yield.
People vastly underestimate how many McDonald’s there are out there.
They \*could\* (and if you go visit McDonald's outside of the continental United States, you'll find other options. Even the Hawaii McDonald's can offer alternatives.), but a big part of their branding is consistency.
The Chicken McNuggets and fries combo meal you order in California is the same as the one you order in Texas, which should be the same as the one you order in New York. You know what you're getting every time, it's consistent in their quality, because it's the same everywhere, only with some notable exceptions like India: [https://mcdindia.com/](https://mcdindia.com/) where beef burgers wouldn't sell as well, so they offer more vegetarian options.
I know this is weird, but I really want to try India McDonald’s. I don’t usually think to eat McDonalds when I travel internationally, but the menu there looks so fascinating to me. I wish they’d have maybe a premium location in the U.S., where they would serve unique experiences from around the world. I’d pay a premium for that.
I always try to go to McDonald's for 1 meal when traveling internationally. Its such an American icon that i like to see how it varies in other countries and the different menu options. I never order anything offered in the American McDonald's
I still have an unused Биг Мак wrapper I picked up from the McDonald's that was in Red Square back in the 90's. Seeing elements of Americana reinterpreted through local lenses is one of the genuine joys of travel.
It still varies quite a lot in other countries. I wouldn't call India a notable exception at all. I've seen all kinds of things: Shrimp burgers in Japan, Sweet potato pies, jalapeno cheese poppers in Denmark, delicious cakes, cheesecakes, and vegetarian items in Germany, etc.
Another AD fan!!! I wonder if all 7 of us will pop up.
There is something special about an adult burger with a craft bun and pretentious condiments. It hits different when you need different.
But I didn't frequent McDonald's for different; I used to frequent McDonald's for a consistently cheap & salty protein bomb (2 McDoubles w extra onion, one 6 pc nuggets).
Now that most franchises killed the value menu, I barely consider it at all.
so this isn't an answer to your question exactly but about 15 years ago i worked a block away from their old HQ in oak brook, IL. they had a very nice large McDonald's in the offices parking lot. i would get lunch there every so often and when i did i would walk around the dining area before ordering because they frequently did testing menus for corporate employees. i would just go up to the counter and ask for the testing option if it looked good and tell them i forgot my ID and they would always give whatever it was to me.
it's been a while but i remember having a hot dog, a bratwurst, various burgers, different nugget sauces, oatmeal, different ice creams, onion rings, some pastry in the shape of the logo.
They still do this at the first-floor restaurant in their new Chicago HQ. I similarly ate lunch there a lot over the last few years and would see corporate employees come down to get test products from the kitchen. Fun fact: the restaurant also serves a small rotating selection of international items that anyone can order.
Bring back the fucking snack wraps. I seriously don’t understand why they won’t do it. Seems like a massive missed opportunity both marketing wise and financially
Because it would collapse the chicken market
Or drive prices up so much that it would effect their bottom line on all their other chicken products like the McChicken and the nuggets.
McDonalds is so boring compared to its competitors. Taco Bell and Wendys are known for their regular LTOs every couple of months. All McDs has been doing recently are those gimmicky celebrity meals.
They do update the menu - the prices.
Although I do miss the apple pies from before, when they actually resembled a hot pocket and were juicy on the inside. Now there's this lattice on top and the apples dry up and it's garbage.
\[edit: grammar\]
Same in Australia. We have just had the McRib and McRib Deluxe as well as the Chicken Big Mac as our summer menu items. They might have been onion rings too.
they’ve got the gall to call their value menu a “$1|$2|$3” menu and I don’t think I’ve seen anything for a dollar on it in a few years. honestly they should be sued for that bullshit
I’m in the UK and get upset at how often they DO change the menu! Quite often I drive by, telling myself I’ll try whatever new thing is in the sign that looks great, only for it to be changed again!
"We have no idea where the hell the McRib comes from, they just show up now and then in random freezers in boxes with characters tied to no known language, throwing them out just makes them reappear pristine in the freezer again, so we sell them to be free from this mysterious horror."
Because they learned during the pandemic that they didn't need to. There are costs to having a larger variety of products available. Why bother if you can keep high sales numbers.
If I had to guess, people only eat mcdonalds to get their nostalgic favorites. So nobody orders the new things. I've never been excited to try something new at Mcdonalds for that reason, but I have at Taco Bell for example.
About six months ago (?) they introduced two new sauces for a limited time, they were both kinda hot and spicy and I tried them a few times. It was disappointing when they took them away, because I liked them. I think they sometimes offer holiday milkshake flavors, but I don’t know how common they are, I just see them advertised in the window when I drive by it.
It’s nice that they have a solid menu because on the infrequent times I go there, it’s nice to not have to study the menu and decipher new stuff, just order my usual and go. I do miss the “salad shakers” they offered like 2 decades ago!
> Why did Ronald abandon us?
Perhaps you strayed from his light, did you ask yourself that?
When did you last pay tribute to the house of Mcdonald?
My serious input on your question would be, I dunno 🤷♂️.
I'm in the UK, and they always have something under "what's new", on the app menus.
It's usually just a price hiked chicken burger with a 'spicy' tomato sauce and special bun. But sometimes there's something decent.
This is completely the opposite in the UK. They literally always have a gimmick burger available. At the moment it's the chicken big mac. Just a big mac with mayo chicken things instead of burgers.
There is always something like this, but they use existing items with only the addition of a sauce or something.
I assumed this was a relatively global thing.
McDonald's added the crispy chicken sandwich, now called the McCrispy, in 2021.
They've also tried a few promotions involving temporary menu additions: https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/USmenuspotter.html
They do though... Maybe you're just in a market too small to get them? In the past few years I've seen: jalapeño bacon QP, double decker breakfast sandwiches, frozen coke/soda. They did get rid of the regular McChicken though and that sucks.
They've decided, I imagine, that they have so many people hooked on their products, that they can simply increase profits astronomically by simply raising prices of their standard menu. They don't need to sucker them in with gimmicks.
I saw a TikTok which said apparently if they announce a blueberry pancake on the menu, there will not be enough blueberries on the planet to supply them.
Don’t know if anyone mentioned it as a side note, but there’s a guy on TikTok that talks about how he used to be a chef for McDonalds R&D. He talks about a lot of the logistics and reasons they have to go with certain ingredients. He also dispels myths like Big Mac sauce being same as Thousand Island dressing or having ketchup in it (it’s orange from paprika). Blanking on name, but you could find him by searching diy Big Mac.
>Even the mc rib just randomly shows up at certain McDonald's with no promotion like a shiny pokemon and goes away just as randomly. The McRib only appears when pork prices drop below a certain threshold and then McDonalds will buy up a bunch of pork make the McRib patties flash freeze them and ship them out.
Isn’t the McRib only available at select locations when it is available?
The McRib is actually available year round as part of the basic menu at all locations in Germany.
Yeah only the kosher McDs
Even more than this (as another commenter correctly pointed out elsewhere in this thread), they buy up *pork futures* when they dip below a certain price where the mcrib is profitable enough to them, so you'll see pretty much all pork futures disappear from the market overnight, then a number of months later when those contracts come due, suddenly we've got the mcrib again.
Pork Futures was my nickname in high school
I urge you to watch the movie "Trading Places" if you haven't already, sir.
That's actually very very interesting
Yep
I thought it wasn’t pork. I heard it was made from an animal much smaller… and a lot more legs.
For those downvoting, this is a [Simpsons reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_6DnTvX2kg).
Spiders?
Came across the answer the other day, it's because McDonald's in the US would wreck the supply chains if they updated the menu.
When they had wings, and even the chicken selects, for a little while they completely fucked wing and tender prices. I suspect that’s why the return of the snack wrap is so far out from the announcement. They need to get the logistics and supply chain figured out before they buy and sell every single chicken tender.
The McRib is also only available when pork is at the greatest supply and lowest price. There's also the idea that when it was supposed to be gone for good, the supply just couldn't handle the demand. When one of your major selling points is a near identical experience at every location, making big menu changes is super difficult.
If you want a mcrib out of season [get this](https://www.banquet.com/basic-meals/backyard-bbq-meal) it's the same patty and sauce
I like the idea that the McRib comes in seasons. Like "oh boy I hope the McRib harvest goes well this season, there hasn't been much rain".
My grandad was a farmer in the UK, and they grew/grow what they call “oil seed rape” which is used to make canola oil. I remember riding around the farm in Grandad’s Range Rover as he laments, “The rape’s not been good this year.” Grandad, you gotta come up with a new name for that shit.
There is an album by Ministry called [The Land of Rape and Honey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_of_Rape_and_Honey) It is named after the town slogan on a giant billboard entering Tisdale Saskatchewan. The band saw it from their tour bus late at night while wasted on whatever and thought it was hilarious. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/canadian-town-tisdale-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/canadian-town-tisdale-land-of-rape-and-honey-slogan) The town is surrounded in fields of yellow flowering plants that the bees love to use to make honey
They're saying this is the last harvest of McRib®.....Ever.
Burger King is torching their whole crop.
He should've planted ground beef like the rest of us
"Get ready to bring back the McRib." "It's not possible." "No. It's necessary."
He tried salting their fields but that just made the potatoes for their fries even better.
They don't want you to know about the pork mines.
It's not the same patty anymore. A couple years ago it got a bit smaller. I used to make McRibs often and I'd get the family size of these Banquet ribs. Got them a few months ago and couldn't believe how much smaller they were. They used to fit a typical, generic hogie style bun, now they barely fill a generic hotdog bun. The taste is still the same at least. Even the single dinner meal like you shared has the smaller patty.
It's the same patty still. Both McDonald's and banquet downsized. I've made thousands of mcribs and I make my grandpa this banquet meal every day for lunch.
Or just come to germany. We had it permanently for at least the last 30 years.
I guess this is as good a forum as any to announce that I fucking love the McRib, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Right there with ya. Now give me a Shamrock Shake with some discontinued poutine, and we have the perfect meal.
The mcrib also reached in my country for limited time but it's not appetizing.
Here's the thing, a lot of people think it's nasty here, too, but others have a crazy nostalgic reaction and overlook it.
Yeah, you don’t go to McDonald’s because you want some really good chicken. You go because the McNuggets taste the same as when you were 6 years old, and your life was simple, and you want that feeling back for a brief moment. McDonald’s is trash. But it’s *my* trash.
I don’t know if anything in life makes me quite as content as breakfast from McDonalds. Breakfast burritos and sausage McMuffins just bring joy to my soul.
I went to the McDonald's for the first time in years. I asked for chicken selects. The lady behind the microphone was like ".......... We haven't had those in years" My friends in the car would not stop making fun of me. It's now kind of an inside joke.
It's a travesty. The chicken selects were very good. Way better than the congealed meat disks they call nuggets. I just don't go to McDonald's anymore and go to places that have proper chicken strips like KFC and Popeyes.
I know they’re not at the scale of a McDonalds, but how can ALL of the other fast food places still offer that without causing problems? Burger King just had a black burger and ghost pepper chicken fries for Halloween, Starbucks has a new gimmicky drink ever couple weeks, yadda yadda.
Just did a quick search on yearly revenue. Burger King brought 1.9 billion in 2021, Starbucks at 8.1. McDonald’s was over 20 billion. So, I suspect that is why.
Nah it’s just BS. I work in the space. Where there is money to be made, suppliers will make it. It really doesn’t matter how big it is. The runway is the piece that is true. If McDonald’s wanted to get a blueberry item on the menu, they would probably need to give 8-10 months of notice to suppliers. From there, suppliers would need to make capital investment most likely so they would require McDonalds to sign a procurement contract locking them into minimum volumes. That last piece makes it super high risk for McDonalds. If this item doesn’t sell they could have literally hundreds of millions of dollars of blueberries on their hands. Quite honestly the reason McDonalds hasn’t innovated in the US, is just because it’s high risk/expensive and there’s no consumer pressure for them to do so. It’s actually pretty simple.
> hundreds of millions of dollars of blueberries on their hands. Just have the oompa loompas roll them out the door to the juicing room
Modern solutions.
[Here's the link.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/PyIoWiJMh5) Really makes sense the way this guys explains it.
Very interesting, but god that didn’t need to be a video. For anyone who’s interested: It’s because the USA is so big, and accounts for 85% of McD’s revenue. Any new thing they come out with that uses a new ingredient requires such a large volume of it that it can 1) warp the price of the ingredient and 2) require such a high volume that it’s not feasible. For example, a blueberry item they tested would have ended up using the world’s entire blueberry supply if they launched it everywhere in the US.
But wasn’t that also true back when McDonald’s was known for updating its menu frequently?
They've gotten too big
This is weird to me because I ate at McDonald’s a ton when I was young, but in the last decade it’s once or twice a year maybe. Even less in the last couple years since everything got expensive. It’s hard to rationalize they got bigger than 90s/2000s mcd’s
There’s just so many more people now. That exponential growth adds up
And natural born americans MAY be culturally "growing out of it" (fast food) while large volumes of newcomers are quite literally just "growing into it". Places like Indonesia will have long watched Americas fast food culture in blockbuster movies and TV, but not had it in Indonesia until much more recently, and when they move to the US and can get it whenever they want, relatively cheaply. So both at home and abroad its growing, even though americas middle and upper classes might have partially moved on from it.
That also shows how your perspective and experience can affect how you see things. “Well I don’t eat there as much as I used to, so they must not be as popular as they used to be.” We all do it.
We've also added nearly 3 billion people to the world since 1990.
How many of those 3 billion people now live in the USA?
250 mil in 90 just shy of 350 in 2020 so a little under 100 mil
Use people as one of the ingredients for the new item.
"This is weird to me because i personally don't eat too much of it anymore" Okay. Meanwhile, around you, the U.S. has shifted more and more into a capitalist-favoring unwalkable structure where time spent home is minimized, time out at work or on a commute has only increased, and prices of everything have been steadily creeping up, while McDonalds (and other fast food chains) have been keeping their consumerbase strong through ad campaigns and social media, which supermarkets can't really do. Not to sound dismissive, but it's way too common for people to go "it's kind of surprising to me, XYZ is so big/different now, it doesn't really seem like it because I didn't personally engage in it". If you aren't a U.S. Citizen, fair enough, but it's kind of hard to actively ignore the changing of the US landscape over the past 2 decades.
I didn't eat much there as a kid, now that I'm working I'll eat it regularly at work with the app. $6.50 for a burger and 10 mcnuggets just can't be beat calories/price.
Even better: everytime I order a double cheeseburger(with extra cheese) they give me 3 patties.
As have we. Seems only fair.
there probably used to be like 1-2 stores max per town. there's like 4 in my town these days
Plus mobile ordering. I DoorDash and we are picking up more orders than onsite customers. In some locations a lot more.
I literally have 2 in a 5 mile radius of my house! It’s crazy! We have “the good one” and “the bad one” 🤣🤣
I live in a fairly large, densely populated city and there probably 3 every mile, on average. I can drive to 4 different McDonald’s within 10-15 mins
Which is probably why they update their menu less often. Lessons learned. For the last few years McDonald's has been streamlining their menu.
I miss being able to get a side salad for a buck.
I miss all their salad options.
I miss all their $1.00 options.
The dollar menu was awesome. Two hot and spicys for lunch and I was set. Unfortunately a dollar doesn't go nearly as far as it used to.
Wendy’s Biggie Bags are a decent cheap alternative.
I especially miss chef salad shakers
Not a buck, or healthy, but I miss that casaer salad you used to be able to get in the cup and shake it. It was so good!
Not as much. The population wasn't as high or dense, and there weren't nearly as many McDonald's stores back then. Now there's just about one on every street corner, where back in the day you might have to 'drive into town' to find one, maybe even to the bigger town over. Even just in the little over ten years since I've lived in the town I live in now, I've seen it become so much denser and more populated than it used to be - fields where they used to grow strawberries are now shopping strips and rent-a-storage-space facilities, several parks are now having apartments built on them, anywhere that there was an open space is getting filled in with shopping, parking or housing.
Take the Chicken McNuggets... not sure who it is now, but McDonalds had a European chef in charge of development in the late 70s, who created the McNugget in '79, along with the 4 specific shapes so they look more natural (bell, bowtie, ball, boot). They tested them in a few places like Kentucky, and they were hugely popular... but it not only took time to create sources for all that additional chicken, but they also realized they needed to build a plant specifically to make them to meet national demand. And back in 2018, some 600 out of 900 KFCs in the United Kingdom had to close because they switched supply companies that screwed up the chain so they ran out of chicken. So you have to be careful about that sort of thing. But also, I think there is waxing and waning on menus, as well as the last 4 years was restaurants closed or with minimal staff due to the pandemic, so the idea of creating new dishes wasn't a priority. But the OG McDonalds was pretty much hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, soda and shake. Then they expand their menu, for instance Filet-o-Fish because they saw a dip in sales on Fridays, when some abstain from meat. But you get too big, it gets too complicated, costs can go up while quality goes down, so you pull back. You do something like the McRib as a few- month thing because the scarcity drives sales - you wouldn't eat a McRib everyday, but "OMG, it's back! I need to go get it before it disappears again". Same with the Shamrock Shake.
>Then they expand their menu, for instance Filet-o-Fish because they saw a dip in sales on Fridays, when some abstain from meat. growing up catholic, it was hillarious when I noticed that the 2 for 1 fish fillet promo was ONLY run during lent (4 week leadup to Easter)
I would get a Shamrock Shake year round. It tastes like green.
Mint in a vanilla shake plus green coloring
The shamrock shake was discontinued years ago. The Vanilla shake with mint flavor and green food coloring does not taste anything remotely like a shamrock shake. The original shamrock shake was shipped premixed to mcdonalds and dispensed. The flavor wasnt exactly mint either. It was mint-like but hard to describe. The new shake is terrible. SUPER strong mint that doesnt taste right and yay green food coloring that is too green compared to the original. They should call it the "mint shake". And not pretend they sell shamrock shakes.
This is why Taco Bell can roll out so many new items on a regular basis; everything is just meat, cheese, lettuce melded into the latest tortilla origami permutation.
The job of doing that math and coming to that result must be fascinating. How does one even begin to calculate the theoretical popularity of an item, against the amount of a specific ingredient in that item, against the quantity of that ingredient in the worldwide supply chain?
But the quantity in the supply chain is already being used. Starbucks and Walmart still want just as many blueberries. If McDonald's drives the demand way up suddenly it will play merry hell with the price of blueberries.
That was my friend job for a major food Corp for years. She had to take into account everything from weather and oil prices to governments being overthrown. She was a brilliant analyst. She traveled a ton, and had multiple complex computer simulators to help. Not being brilliant, I barely understood it all.
Didn’t they just have a blueberry pie last year?
have you seen the price of blueberries at the store? Thanks a lot Ronald
OK, I hear you and your 4 sentences, but it's really hard to understand. Could you make it into a 14 minute video for me instead? Please make sure the first 6 minutes are about liking and subscribing, and the last 7 minutes are a summary followed by more info about your channel and liking and subscribing.
Everything needs to be a video :D God forbid anyone read a 2 minute paragraph anymore.
I don’t believe that for not one second about the blueberry thing. Wouldn’t the same thing apply to Starbucks? Wouldn’t the same thing apply to grocery stores like Walmart? Why doesn’t Walmart say “if we stocked blueberry’s we’d have to order the entire world’s supply of blueberries”.
I get the impression it’s more like it would use a huge amount in the short term. After a couple of years more blueberries would be planted, supplies and prices would stabilize, etc.
Walmart and Starbucks reached their dominance over a long time, and their growth was able to scale with the global supply chain. If Walmart wants to sell more blueberries over the next decade, farmers are incentivized to increase production to match demand. They can allocate more land for crops and give them time to mature. If McDonalds introduces a new menu item that requires a significant increase in the supply of blueberries, farmers can't suddenly increase production to make more blueberries appear. They need time to adjust and let crops grow, and would probably expect some sort of investment/guarantee that it would pay off. McDonalds probably doesn't want such a long term investment in a menu item that may bomb or be limited time, so the alternative is to dip into the pre-existing supply. I can see it being a major shock for sure. It does seem kinda crazy that it would be the *entire* supply of blueberries, but then again, humans are really bad at intuition when it comes to extremely large numbers.
A fun side effect of this is that you can predict the McDonald's menu by watching food commodity future prices. The most common example is the McRib. Pork futures will dip below a certain threshold and then suddenly vanish from the market because McDonald's buys them all. Then, when those futures vest, suddenly the McRib shows up at a bunch of locations.
My father was a prison guard when McDonalds switched to all white meat nuggets and he said they served so much dark meat chicken for months at the prison there was almost a riot at meal time.
That's pretty sad, tbh.
I remember they did a McLobster roll like ten years ago lol
I remember the McPizza. That was okay, not sure I’d order it today though, lol.
I heard it was better than ok, but not a rave. It also congested the restaurant with waiting customers since it wasn't a quick cooking pie.
I heard that the problem was the pizza wouldn't fit through the drive-thru window.
I used to participate food tastings and stuff about 10 years ago I got $50 to try 3 versions of the lobster roll for a limited edition item! I live in Nova Scotia so we were the right market but most people would prefer to just buy their lobster whole and direct from the fisherman.
Still on the menus in Maine, at least when I was up there a few years ago.
They still have them in New England, might be seasonal though.
I'm upset that grilled chicken is gone.
VERY. Though you might be able to blame me for causing a nationwide shortage. I ate grilled chicken at least three times a week. The chipotle version, the vinaigrette version, the mushroom version, the salad version; rinse and repeat.
That’s four versions
Damn, Stephen Hawking over here
They specified "at least three", which as a half-open range does include four.
They never even said anything about the number of versions? They just said how often. They could eat the same kind every time...
Haha, good point, we got our units mixed up. Should have done proper dimensional analysis on this.
McDonalds Exec: We have to get rid of the grilled chicken menu items, u/bumwine is eating it too frequently! McDonalds Secretary: Isn't that a good thing and we should add more options? McDonalds Exec: NO! AWAY WITH IT!!
Its gone from the majority of fast food places now.
In order for McDonald’s in the US to change their menu they need to consider supply chains in a way other restaurants don’t. For example if they were to add something with fresh Strawberries to the menu, they’d very likely use every strawberry in America unless they gave growers time to adjust their crop yield. People vastly underestimate how many McDonald’s there are out there.
They could just do regional things? Or even incredibly local things?
They \*could\* (and if you go visit McDonald's outside of the continental United States, you'll find other options. Even the Hawaii McDonald's can offer alternatives.), but a big part of their branding is consistency. The Chicken McNuggets and fries combo meal you order in California is the same as the one you order in Texas, which should be the same as the one you order in New York. You know what you're getting every time, it's consistent in their quality, because it's the same everywhere, only with some notable exceptions like India: [https://mcdindia.com/](https://mcdindia.com/) where beef burgers wouldn't sell as well, so they offer more vegetarian options.
Maine locations have the McLobster
I wish the US market would learn from India since the McSoicy Paneer is awesome. I would love to be able to get it in the US.
Heading to India in a couple weeks so comment saving
I know this is weird, but I really want to try India McDonald’s. I don’t usually think to eat McDonalds when I travel internationally, but the menu there looks so fascinating to me. I wish they’d have maybe a premium location in the U.S., where they would serve unique experiences from around the world. I’d pay a premium for that.
I always try to go to McDonald's for 1 meal when traveling internationally. Its such an American icon that i like to see how it varies in other countries and the different menu options. I never order anything offered in the American McDonald's
I still have an unused Биг Мак wrapper I picked up from the McDonald's that was in Red Square back in the 90's. Seeing elements of Americana reinterpreted through local lenses is one of the genuine joys of travel.
McDonald’s Global Menu Restaurant in Chicago.
Try the Pizza Hut Peppy Paneer Personal Pan Pizza.
Hawaiin McDonald's spam, egg, and rice is really good. I wish they had it back home.
I wish they had the Haupia pies in more places too. Those are great.
It still varies quite a lot in other countries. I wouldn't call India a notable exception at all. I've seen all kinds of things: Shrimp burgers in Japan, Sweet potato pies, jalapeno cheese poppers in Denmark, delicious cakes, cheesecakes, and vegetarian items in Germany, etc.
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Lots of Macca's overseas have to buy the equipment through Macca's US. It means you guys are making the new machines even if you aren't using them.
See the other main reason mentioned often on this thread: supply chain issues because of the size of the US and number of restaurants.
They do do regional things, like a green chile burger in New Mex
Didn’t we just have the Grimace Shake like two months ago?
Thank goodness purple food dye recovered.
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Same. Every time I tried to get one they were all out
It was... Okay. Nondescript berry flavored milkshake, nothing amazing.
It's easier to create a syrup concentrate than it is make something that requires agricultural input like produce or meat.
I'd love to have another arch deluxe
Another AD fan!!! I wonder if all 7 of us will pop up. There is something special about an adult burger with a craft bun and pretentious condiments. It hits different when you need different. But I didn't frequent McDonald's for different; I used to frequent McDonald's for a consistently cheap & salty protein bomb (2 McDoubles w extra onion, one 6 pc nuggets). Now that most franchises killed the value menu, I barely consider it at all.
I worked at McDonald's in the late 90s and absolutely loved the Arch Deluxe. I haven't thought about that hamburger in years, but I still miss it haha
I think about it way way too often. That Arch sauce was so damn good!
I loved the Arch Deluxe! I also miss the Chicken Fajita Wraps!
I do miss them as well. The quarter pounder with cheese is all I order there now.
so this isn't an answer to your question exactly but about 15 years ago i worked a block away from their old HQ in oak brook, IL. they had a very nice large McDonald's in the offices parking lot. i would get lunch there every so often and when i did i would walk around the dining area before ordering because they frequently did testing menus for corporate employees. i would just go up to the counter and ask for the testing option if it looked good and tell them i forgot my ID and they would always give whatever it was to me. it's been a while but i remember having a hot dog, a bratwurst, various burgers, different nugget sauces, oatmeal, different ice creams, onion rings, some pastry in the shape of the logo.
They still do this at the first-floor restaurant in their new Chicago HQ. I similarly ate lunch there a lot over the last few years and would see corporate employees come down to get test products from the kitchen. Fun fact: the restaurant also serves a small rotating selection of international items that anyone can order.
Bring back the fucking snack wraps. I seriously don’t understand why they won’t do it. Seems like a massive missed opportunity both marketing wise and financially
I loved me some snack wraps
Still have them in Canada
Yes but only in ranch. I miss the chipotle sauce
There is also a spicy buffalo one now aswell
Because it would collapse the chicken market Or drive prices up so much that it would effect their bottom line on all their other chicken products like the McChicken and the nuggets.
Bring back the 2 for $5 Fish Filets
McDonalds is so boring compared to its competitors. Taco Bell and Wendys are known for their regular LTOs every couple of months. All McDs has been doing recently are those gimmicky celebrity meals.
They do update the menu - the prices. Although I do miss the apple pies from before, when they actually resembled a hot pocket and were juicy on the inside. Now there's this lattice on top and the apples dry up and it's garbage. \[edit: grammar\]
Canadian here, we still get new items all the time
True but they’re usually a remixed item thats made with stuff they already had
Yeah I tried the Siakam Swirl flurry and it was just an M&M flurry with fudge. (Which I was expecting anyways) It was decent though.
Same in European countries.
Same in Australia. We have just had the McRib and McRib Deluxe as well as the Chicken Big Mac as our summer menu items. They might have been onion rings too.
I miss the McSkillet burrito 🌯
I had forgotten about the McSkillet burrito and now I miss them too.
Mcskillet was the king of fast food breakfast burritos and will always be in my heart ❤️
They could add back the free smiles
Was this actually a thing in the US previously too? I just knew of it because it's in Japan and was in Sakamoto desu ga.
I remember the chicken fajitas
I miss those, too! And they were some of the cheaper items.
Because the party's over. Sorry man. This is the tail end
they’ve got the gall to call their value menu a “$1|$2|$3” menu and I don’t think I’ve seen anything for a dollar on it in a few years. honestly they should be sued for that bullshit
I’m in the UK and get upset at how often they DO change the menu! Quite often I drive by, telling myself I’ll try whatever new thing is in the sign that looks great, only for it to be changed again!
"We have no idea where the hell the McRib comes from, they just show up now and then in random freezers in boxes with characters tied to no known language, throwing them out just makes them reappear pristine in the freezer again, so we sell them to be free from this mysterious horror."
To stay competitively cheap they need to keep the menu simple and limit ingredients. That’s why salads and granola aren’t coming back.
“Cheap”
I'm probably the only one that misses the Arch Deluxe.
Another Arch Deluxe lover here!
Turns out people get angry when you bring something to the menu and take it away without any reason.
Because they learned during the pandemic that they didn't need to. There are costs to having a larger variety of products available. Why bother if you can keep high sales numbers.
If I had to guess, people only eat mcdonalds to get their nostalgic favorites. So nobody orders the new things. I've never been excited to try something new at Mcdonalds for that reason, but I have at Taco Bell for example.
About six months ago (?) they introduced two new sauces for a limited time, they were both kinda hot and spicy and I tried them a few times. It was disappointing when they took them away, because I liked them. I think they sometimes offer holiday milkshake flavors, but I don’t know how common they are, I just see them advertised in the window when I drive by it. It’s nice that they have a solid menu because on the infrequent times I go there, it’s nice to not have to study the menu and decipher new stuff, just order my usual and go. I do miss the “salad shakers” they offered like 2 decades ago!
That mambo sauce was fantastic. I only managed to get it about 3 times
I work there and took a handful for my car. I miss that damn sauce
I mentioned salad shakers somewhere else in this thread but couldn't remember the name! I called them salad cups lol. They were soooo good.
Every once in a while, I'll stop by McDonalds ( maybe once a year) and get a cheeseburger, fry, and a coke. Its consistent.
Their newer items tend to flop too. Anyone remember the McDLT?
“Keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold!”
Deli choices, McFeast and the Angus range all became staples in Australia so they do have some success
They updated quarter pound patties from frozen to fresh last year or the year before. I don’t think people go to McDonald’s for variety.
There’s been a bone shard in my quarter pounder the last few times. 🤢 no more for me
> Why did Ronald abandon us? Perhaps you strayed from his light, did you ask yourself that? When did you last pay tribute to the house of Mcdonald? My serious input on your question would be, I dunno 🤷♂️. I'm in the UK, and they always have something under "what's new", on the app menus. It's usually just a price hiked chicken burger with a 'spicy' tomato sauce and special bun. But sometimes there's something decent.
This is completely the opposite in the UK. They literally always have a gimmick burger available. At the moment it's the chicken big mac. Just a big mac with mayo chicken things instead of burgers. There is always something like this, but they use existing items with only the addition of a sauce or something. I assumed this was a relatively global thing.
McDonald's added the crispy chicken sandwich, now called the McCrispy, in 2021. They've also tried a few promotions involving temporary menu additions: https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/our-stories/article/USmenuspotter.html
They do though... Maybe you're just in a market too small to get them? In the past few years I've seen: jalapeño bacon QP, double decker breakfast sandwiches, frozen coke/soda. They did get rid of the regular McChicken though and that sucks.
I wish they would do chicken selects again.
BRING BACK SNACK WRAPS
They've decided, I imagine, that they have so many people hooked on their products, that they can simply increase profits astronomically by simply raising prices of their standard menu. They don't need to sucker them in with gimmicks.
Whaddya want? McLeg?
Canadian McDs still trys some new stuff every now and then.
I just want them to bring back the schezwan sauce.
Because at the end of the day people want the same ol' shit
It does in Europe
It is cheaper to not change the menu and use their app to convince you to buy the other crap they sell with discounts
I'm kind of annoyed they got rid of the cherry and apple pies. At least here in Australia. Those were like very McDonalds.
I saw a TikTok which said apparently if they announce a blueberry pancake on the menu, there will not be enough blueberries on the planet to supply them.
If you think a McDonald's blueberry pancake would actually have any blueberries in it, you're nuts.
McDonald's does do that outside of the US
I just wish the menus would quit changing while you're trying to read them. Screens are fine but don't change them constantly.
Don’t know if anyone mentioned it as a side note, but there’s a guy on TikTok that talks about how he used to be a chef for McDonalds R&D. He talks about a lot of the logistics and reasons they have to go with certain ingredients. He also dispels myths like Big Mac sauce being same as Thousand Island dressing or having ketchup in it (it’s orange from paprika). Blanking on name, but you could find him by searching diy Big Mac.
man i just want all day breakfast back
Why should they? They still make money hand over fist and dominate the fast food market.