McDonald’s is bringing its play for the big burger customer to the U.S.
The fast-food giant said on Tuesday that it will start serving the Big Arch, the company’s half-pound burger, in the U.S. starting on March 3 for a limited time.
The burger features two quarter-pound patties, crispy and slivered onions, pickles, three slices of white cheddar cheese and a “Big Arch Sauce” with mustard, tomato and pickle flavors, on a toasted bun with sesame and poppy seeds.
McDonald’s has sold the product in several international markets, including the UK and France as well as Canada, which first started selling the burger in 2024. Company executives have been pleased with its performance thus far, certainly enough to bring the product stateside. The burger is now on the permanent menu at McDonald’s in the UK.
“We began to pilot Big Arch about a year and a half ago and it’s shown strong traction across several markets,” Jill McDonald, global chief restaurant experience officer for McDonald’s, told analysts on the company’s earnings call earlier this month. “Customers are responding to this more satisfying burger that meets demand for something heartier while still feeling distinctly McDonald’s.”
McDonald’s first broached the prospect of a bigger burger in 2024, believing that there is substantial opportunity in the U.S. and many other markets for a larger-sized burger.
The company has tried various premium burger offerings over the years, including third-pound Angus burgers along with the Arch Deluxe and the McDLT. None of them have spent all that much time on the company’s menu.
Yet executives have said in the past that the company went about it wrong. Customers aren’t looking for a “premium” burger, per se, just a larger one. “We tried to get after this opportunity for a number of years because we thought the opportunity was about premium burger,” CFO Ian Borden said in 2024. That was “wrong,” he said, and as such McDonald’s was not successful.
McDonald’s is hardly the only chain pushing big burgers. Shake Shack last year introduced a burger with two quarter-pound patties itself last year, the Big Shack, priced at $9.99.
McDonald’s efforts on this come as the company has been targeting more specialized competitors with a Restaurant Experience Team, featuring groups targeting beverages, chicken and burgers. Those groups are designed to go after “specialist” competitors—like, say, Shake Shack—that are able to specialize in one of those areas.
The bigger burger could help McDonald’s compete with burger chains like Shake Shack, Five Guys and others that frequently sell larger-sized burgers.
Executives called the Big Arch a “platform” and said there are opportunities to expand that platform.
“We see potential to continue scaling this platform as we strengthen our position within this tier of the beef category,” McDonald said.
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