Expert Opinion By Bill Murphy Jr., Founder Of Understandably And Contributing Editor, Inc. @Billmurphyjr.
The year was 1967, and a McDonald’s franchisee in Pennsylvania came up with an idea. Instead of just selling hamburgers, he thought, what if we offered one with:
- two all-beef patties,
- special sauce,
- lettuce,
- cheese,
- pickles and onions, and
- a sesame seed bun?
And with that, the Big Mac was born.
Actually, the big innovation—which McDonald’s franchisee Jim Delligatti freely admitted he copied from other burger restaurants—was the idea of a double-decker burger that had a bun with a top, bottom, and middle.
A year later, McDonald’s introduced the Big Mac around the country, and it proved wildly popular, with well over 500 million eaten every year. Heck, one customer kept track and ate more than 30,000 Big Macs himself over the decades.
The point is that if there’s one thing people think of when they think of McDonald’s, it has to be the Big Mac.
That’s why the big news about the Big Mac this week is so — well, big.
It might have been the worst-kept secret in the burger world, but McDonald’s announced this week that it’s finally going to introduce the Chicken Big Mac to America “for a limited time offer starting Oct. 10, at participating locations while supplies last.”
Here’s Tariq Hassan, chief marketing and customer experience officer at McDonald’s USA from the announcement:
“With the introduction of the Chicken Big Mac, we’re excited to pay homage to one of our most iconic menu items, the Big Mac, and introduce it to a whole new generation of fans.
By tapping into some of our fans’ biggest passions from dupe culture to live-streaming, we’re able to serve up more than just a sandwich.
There truly is something for everyone to enjoy in this campaign and we’re bringing experiences that will surprise and delight them, all before the Chicken Big Mac hits restaurants.”
I’m sorry: “Dupe culture” and “live-streaming?”
That has to do with how McDonald’s secretly introduced the new Chicken Big Mac for one day in Los Angeles, via a popup restaurant they called “McDonnell’s,” in cooperation with Chain (which specializes in popups and upscale versions of fast-food favorites).
So, if you were in L.A. recently and thought, gosh, I’ll bet that pop-up restaurant is going to get sued for skating so close to the McDonald’s brand and selling a chicken sandwich that looks and tastes an awful lot like a Big Mac, well now you know.
To be sure, McDonald’s has been selling a Chicken Big Mac in overseas markets for quite some time; they just hadn’t introduced it at scale in the United States.
Once upon a time quick-service chains in the United States competed on their beef burgers. They still do, of course, but the newest and biggest battlefront here in America clearly has to do with chicken.
Today, McDonald’s isn’t competing just with other burger chains. They’re competing, for example with Chick-fil-A.
And more than six years have passed since I first wrote here about how McDonald’s had set a big goal for its future: to become, as the company put it to franchisees, “a credible chicken player.”
You know, that doesn’t sound more appetizing now than it did when it first appeared in that McDonald’s memo. But it is worth noting that McDonald’s is very protective of the Big Mac, so the idea of producing a different version of it that features chicken is in itself a big deal.
As Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business, pointed out:
McDonald’s historically has been reticent to do much with its Big Mac, a stark contrast to Burger King, which routinely offers various versions of its signature Whopper sandwich, such as one this month that will feature a purple bun.
McDonald’s has been more willing to offer different versions of its Big Mac in more recent years, particularly as it has grown internationally and into communities where beef isn’t as popular as it is in the U.S.
Anyway, sometimes when chains like McDonald’s make a big deal about a new product, we cover them in part because we’re excited to see whether they do well or not. McDonald’s has had its share of products in both categories.
But of all the new things McDonald’s has rolled out in recent memory, the Chicken Big Mac has to be the most anticipated, tested, and flat-out just-makes-sense new offering in a long time.
Maybe they’ll have to update the classic jingle. Let’s check back here 57 years from now, and see how well it compares to the original.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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