In 1948, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald retooled their original San Bernardino, Calif., restaurant around a slim menu selling burgers for 15 cents. Their restaurant, called McDonald’s, would go on to provide the blueprint for the fast-food business. They shrunk down the patties to make them more affordable, and served them with ketchup, mustard, onions and two pickles—no substitutes, to keep service fast. The concept was a hit.
Burgers last year accounted for around 40% of U.S. fast-food sales, and most chains can’t make it without a strong contender. Some 68% of Americans eat burgers at fast-food restaurants at least once a month.
The problem for McDonald’s is that it came in 13th among U.S. chains based on the number of customers (28%) calling their burgers desirable, reports The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 1, 2023). White Castle led the list with 72%, and Burger King followed at 52%.
With increased competition in the burger market, McDonald’s executives decided to revamp many of the industrial-scale techniques that have produced cheap, uniform burgers. In some cases, the firm is reviving practices it scrapped long ago in a push for efficiency. “We can do it quick, fast and safe, but it doesn’t necessarily taste great. So, we want to incorporate quality into where we’re at,” said a top exec.
Deciding it’s had enough with dry patties and squishy buns, the firm made more than 50 tweaks on its burgers adding up to the biggest enhancements in decades. They started by cooking the beef with the onions on top of the patty, added room-temperature cheese that melted faster and put it all on the shinier brioche-style bun, a moister bread to better hold heat. They found cooking 6 burgers at a time instead of 8 improved consistency and delivered fresher patties. They calibrated the gap on the metal clamshell that presses burgers on the grill down to the millimeter, to avoid pressing too hard and squeezing out all the juices.
For a chain with tens of thousands of restaurants, the overhaul posed a massive undertaking. Restaurants would have to retrain workers to look out for quality measures like when grills were running too hot and drying out patties. McDonald’s needed to ensure bakeries across the world could comply with its new specifications for buns. The plan has taken 6 years to implement.
Classroom discussion questions:
- Other products and services have been around for many years, like the Big Mac, and have also had continued success through enhancements. Identify one such product.
- Why did it tale McDonald’s so long to improve its burger?
