Fast food
McGangbang and Co.: McDonald’s makes the secret menus official – and the customers are angry
Four of the secret burgers can also be officially ordered in the USA since Monday
© McDonald’s / PR
For years, secret burger combinations have been haunting the web, with which you can put together burgers that are not actually listed in the big chains. Now McDonald’s in the USA has made the hacks official for the first time. And causes disappointment.
They have mysterious names like “McGangbang”, “Land, Air and Sea” or “Surf’n’Turf” – and they weren’t found on any of the big chain burger menus. By cleverly combining existing ingredients, fans invented new burgers, which, with the right code word and a little luck, were served. Now McDonald’s is making some of the secret burgers official.
“Land, Air and Sea Sandwich”, “Hash Brown McMuffin”, “Crunchy Double” and “Surf + Turf” have been officially available since Monday. McDonald’s even advertises with detailed descriptions of which other burgers the new creations, known as “burger hacks” in the USA, are composed of. For example, Land, Air and Sea combines Big Mac patties, McChicken’s chicken cutlet and FishMac’s fishcake into one giant burger monster.
“That’s not a hack”
But the fans seem to have imagined the implementations a little differently. This is shown by numerous astonished tweets on the subject. McDonald’s doesn’t pack the Neuburger already assembled in the bag, as you would expect. Instead, it only provides the individual burgers you need – and the instructions on how to reassemble them.
That doesn’t go down particularly well. “Why offer burger hacks if I have to assemble them myself?” wonders Twitter user Axneezy. “I got six separate burgers,” SageMode.Vince annoys. “Please make it clear that a hack menu means that the customer should assemble it himself. #disappointed.”
Unanimous reaction
Others see it that way too. “How is this offer a hack?” asks Raspberry Ketones. “It’s just a combination. It should have been marketed differently. If it’s supposed to be a hack, it has to be finished.” “So I’m supposed to build a Franconian sandwich out of several burgers,” asks David Onda. And evaluates his experience clearly: “I regret every moment. It was disgusting.” Others are even harsher: “That’s not a hack, that’s a joke.”
User Jeremy Martin sees a strategy behind it. “So MacDonald’s lets us order two burgers and then rebuild them ourselves. Sounds like a smart plan to sell me two burgers and make it feel like something new.”
It remains to be seen whether McDonald’s will repeat the campaign again given this clear feedback.
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