One thing that is true: the craving for McDonald’s. One thing that isn’t true: craving a McDonald’s salad. Customers know this. McDonald’s does too, and it shouldn’t forget that.
The fast food chain’s efforts toward healthier alternatives have been rotten. At the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum in June, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, detailed the company’s missteps on meatless burgers and salads. The McPlant burger failed tests in San Francisco and Dallas, he said, and won’t appear on American menus anytime soon. (Vegan options are doing better for the brand in Europe.) As for salads, McDonald’s may not serve them widely at some point after removing them in 2020 during the pandemic, but only if customers show up for them, which they don’t. have. t in the past. “What our experience has proven is that this is not what the consumer is looking for,” Erlinger said.
You go to McDonald’s for a cheap and desirable quick bite, not a healthier, more expensive item.
To state the obvious: definitely. McDonald’s the whole thing is that it is not some beacon of health. People are showing up for an affordable, good burger accompanied by some (hopefully) affordable, decent fries. No one walks up to the golden arches jazzed that they are about to make a super great choice for their body.
“You go to McDonald’s for a cheap, desirable quick bite, not a healthier, more expensive item,” said Darren Tristano, CEO and founder of Foodservice Results, a food industry consultancy. A higher-quality alternative can be thrown into the menu, so if people are going out to eat in a group, there’s an option for a health-conscious person in the mix, preventing their veto, he said. “But at the end of the day you’re not going to see a bunch of kids go in there and buy four plant-based burgers.”
In general, McDonald’s is extremely good at scaling an established trend and bringing it to the masses, said Danilo Gargiulo, a senior research analyst at AB Bernstein. But it is not really a trendsetter or an innovative company. When you consider the extent to which plant-based meat has failed to catch on in the US, it makes sense that it would be a failure at McDonald’s as well. Beyond Meat, which partnered with McDonald’s on McPlant, earlier this year unveiled a turnaround plan to try to revive its brand, including cutting at least $70 million in costs. Its rival Impossible Foods has undertaken multiple rounds of layoffs over the past two years.
The problem with salads isn’t that they’re not popular in the US—it’s that there are plenty of places to get them that aren’t McDonald’s. There’s no good reason to get your raw food from the same place that makes Grimace Shake when you can go to Sweetgreen, Cava, or Panera. Or you can just whip up something from ingredients you picked up at the grocery store, reserving your trip to McDonald’s for when you’re in the mood for a treat.
Customers give restaurants a kind of permission to serve certain items. At McDonald’s, diners are on board with breakfast sandwiches and Big Macs; they are not so on board with a mediocre salad.
“They’ll only give you credit for things they think you can produce,” Tristano said. “You won’t see an Eggs Benedict at McDonald’s.”
Over the years, McDonald’s has been able to fold some non-essential items — namely coffee and chicken. But it makes sense. Coffee, including specialty coffee, is already popular. McDonald’s has had regular coffee available for decades, but the first McCafé didn’t open until 1993, in Australia. The first McCafé in the US opened in Chicago in 2001.
McDonald’s developed chicken nuggets in the 1970s and added them to the menu in 1983. It put the McChicken sandwich on the menu in 1980, later pulled it due to poor performance, then put it back after the success of the nuggets. Today, McDonald’s is selling as much chicken as beef, if not more, making $25 billion in chicken sales annually. Still, it’s the crispy chicken and bits of grit that’s blowing up, not the leaner grilled chicken, which also drove it off menus across the US during the pandemic.
It’s not just consumer demand that’s keeping McDonald’s menu limited to more traditional, less-than-body-boosting items, it’s also its franchises. She doesn’t want to offer items that are difficult to sell, let alone invest in making them. Keeping the menu limited helps them serve faster and keep costs down.
No one goes to the Apple Store looking for a charm bracelet. And no one goes to McDonald’s looking for greens.
In the fast food landscape, McDonald’s is unique and it is not. Tristano said Wendy’s, for example, hasn’t had much success expanding its menu beyond chili, which it can use leftover meat to create, though it does have salad. Gargiulo said Burger King had done a little better on several fronts because it’s in its DNA to focus on slightly higher quality. The Impossible Whopper remains available in the US, although some of the other vegan options, such as the Impossible Croissan’wich, have been removed from the menu.
“Part of what makes McDonald’s shine is their ability to do things operationally. And even if you look at the kitchen, the equipment and the way it’s laid out and how their workers are optimizing the space, and the time they they use everything. It looks like a Toyota production system,” said Gargiulo. “Burger King has always been a little more dishonest. It’s been a little more that the younger brother has tried to be something better than McDonald’s.”
Consumers have certain expectations for McDonald’s, just as they do for any brand. For McDonald’s, they want it to be cheap, they want it to taste good, and they want to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. But if they’re worried about their waistlines, at this point it’s pretty clear that McDonald’s is not the place to go. No one goes to J.Crew looking for a new car. No one goes to the Apple Store looking for a charm bracelet. And no one goes to McDonald’s looking for greens.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.