For Americans, the burger is not just a quick bite to eat. It is the subject of heated controversy: How thick does the meatball have to be between the bun halves? Does the lettuce leaf belong up or down? And are newfangled ingredients like avocados and jalapeños a culinary enrichment or a sacrilege? There are quite a few families who have already fallen out over these questions.
McDonald’s has now joined the debate and promises nothing less than a burger revolution. The almost 70-year-old fast food chain has given its hamburgers a relaunch, so to speak. From now on, the meat patties are no longer thrown on the grill in groups of eight, but only in groups of six. The previously raw onions will be fried in the future and the sauce will be distributed more generously. The company also wants to replace its sticky rolls with fluffier versions.
At first glance, all of this doesn’t sound as if McDonald’s is reinventing the wheel, er, the burger. But according to the group, this is the biggest change in several decades. The burgers should taste juicier and fresher this way. A bit more like the competitors’ products that have been harassing McDonald’s for some time.
A number of burger chains that promise better quality have recently grown significantly in the USA. Shake Shack, for example, started with a small booth in New York’s Madison Square Park and is now a publicly traded company with 400 branches. His employees flatten the burgers on the grill with a spatula so that they become crispier. But they also cost about three times as much as a simple cheeseburger from McDonald’s. “Five Guys” follows a similar strategy. Both companies recently gained market share and expanded internationally.
McDonald’s restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. The fast food chain has had numerous competitors since its inception.
(Photo: JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS)
McDonald’s, on the other hand, has so far relied on a dualism of efficiency and uniformity. The company’s hamburgers should taste almost identical anywhere in the world. Apart from exceptions like India, where the Big Mac is served with chicken instead of beef and is called Chicken Maharajah Mac. This uniformity makes McDonald’s fast and safe, but it comes at the expense of taste, the quote says Wall Street Journal a manager of the group.
At least the business didn’t affect her. In the third quarter of 2023, McDonald’s sales in the United States grew by eight percent. This may also be due to the fact that, according to a survey by the market research institute Technomics, 85 percent of Americans eat a burger at least once a month. One in three people even consume fast food every day, much to the displeasure of the American health authority.
Since you can’t simply turn around a tanker like McDonald’s with its 40,000 stores, most of which are operated by franchisees, the company spent years fine-tuning the innovations in its test kitchens. Many are less about the ingredients and more about the way the hamburgers are prepared. Operators of McDonald’s restaurants should store lettuce leaves in smaller containers in the future so that they stay fresh for longer. For a better melting point, you should bring the cheese to room temperature before frying instead of taking it out of the fridge as before.
Only customers on the West Coast and Midwest can currently judge whether the effort was worth it. The burger revolution is only expected to arrive in all American McDonald’s stores over the course of next year.