McDonald’s isn’t just pricing its way out of its traffic problems.
The fast-food giant has unleashed several new menu items in recent weeks in its drive to bolster sales, including the long-awaited Snack Wrap, which officially returns to the company’s menu in two varieties on Thursday.
The company last month added McCrispy Strips to its menu as part of a drive to increase chicken sales. More recently it added the Daily Double, which is basically an upgraded McDouble.
Last week it introduced Spicy McMuffins in the morning, which adds Spicy Pepper Sauce to the chain’s popular breakfast sandwiches. It also recently brought back the Blueberry & Crème Pie.
McDonald’s isn’t the only restaurant chain that has been adding more products to its menu of late.
Restaurant chains added a record number of new limited-time offers last year, according to Restaurant Business sister company Technomic, a record that was established by October. Much of that is driven by social media and a need to drive more traffic, which has put pressure on marketing teams to come up with new menu items.
McDonald’s pulled numerous items from its menu during the pandemic, with many of them not returning, and since then new additions were relatively slow. Its McCrispy Strips, for instance, were the first new permanent item in four years, since the McCrispy Sandwich in 2021.
For the most part, new menu items weren’t all that necessary: The chain’s same-store sales increased for 15 straight quarters coming out of the pandemic, with several double-digit increases.
That changed last year, and now the company has reported negative numbers in three of the past four periods, including a 3.6% decline in the first quarter. That’s the chain’s worst such string in a decade. The company’s traffic has been down for longer.
Spicy McMuffins.
A lot of that is driven by consumer frustration over higher prices, which has played itself out in social media. McDonald’s has responded this year with a new value offer, the McValue Menu, which features a selection of bundled value offers and deals available in local markets and on the company’s mobile app.
Some of the items McDonald’s is adding bolster its value mix. The Daily Double, for instance, is included in a bundled meal offer on the McValue menu, as well as being available on its own.
The Snack Wraps, meanwhile, are priced at $2.99 apiece, a price point designed to appeal to more budget-conscious consumers. The wraps will come in two flavors: Spicy and Ranch.
McDonald’s took the rare step last year of basically announcing their return on national television seven months before their introduction, which came after the chain’s e. coli outbreak in Colorado last year, blamed on one of the chain’s onion suppliers.
Whether all these new products can lift McDonald’s out of its sales slump remains to be seen. The McCrispy Strips received mixed reviews among customers, and they’re the base for the Snack Wraps. But at least the company is shifting attention away from its prices toward its menu items.
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