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McDonald’s is famous for their fast food, and they’re not slowing down any time soon. Founded by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernadino, CA, in 1948, the chain wasn’t the first McDonald’s iteration. In fact, the brothers previously owned a drive-in hamburger stand called McDonald’s Bar-B-Q. Picture the kind of place you’d see in old movies; people pulled up in their own vehicles, and servers wheeled around on roller skates.
The brothers soon realized they sold more burgers than barbecue sandwiches, though. So they shut the restaurant down, redesigned, and reopened with a menu of nine items and some clever innovations. For example, they had a self-service counter and turned their food production process into an assembly line, which they called the Speedee Service System.
Instead of hiring short order cooks, the brothers employed untrained fast-food workers who each had one, very specific job. The other big draw? By cutting down on time and expensive staff, the company could afford to charge just 15 cents per burger — half the price of other restaurants. A cheeseburger cost 19 cents!
While you can still get many of those original nine items, McDonald’s continues to innovate and come up with new exciting menu items. Here’s what McDonald’s menu item appeared the year you were born.
You know what people like more than burgers? Bigger burgers! That’s why, 25 years after opening, McDonald’s added this larger option. A regular McDonald’s burger patty is a tenth of a pound of beef (or 1.6 oz) while a Quarter Pounder has a quarter pound of beef (4 oz), meaning it should be 2.5 times bigger. Except, in 2015, CNBC reported McDonald’s quietly changed the size of their Quarter Pounder from 4 oz to 4.25 oz. And in 2018, the chain announced that all of their Quarter Pounders would contain 100 percent fresh beef. Perhaps they wanted to take on competitors like In-N-Out and Shake Shack.
The story of McDonald’s first attempt at breakfast started in 1972. Herb Peterson, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Santa Barbara, CA, came up with the sandwich. He combined a circular egg with bacon and cheese on a toasted and buttered English muffin. Because McDonald’s new owner, Ray Kroc, was notoriously headstrong, Herb refused to explain that the sandwich was really a breakfast item. Kroc took a bite, however, and loved it immediately. The original Egg McMuffin, which was named by Patty Turner, a McDonald’s executive’s wife, cost 63 cents., and it took three years to make its way to every McDonald’s. But it’s still around today!
Two years after the egg-ceptional success of the Egg McMuffin, McDonald’s branched out with even more breakfast options. In addition to the Egg McMuffin, the first full breakfast menu included English muffins, hotcakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, and Danish pastries. Five years later, the company introduced the Deluxe Breakfast; it combined some of those items into one meal and included bacon.
By 1981, breakfast items accounted for 18 percent of McDonald’s sales. But we still had to wait until 2015 for the All Day Breakfast menu. However, in 2019, McDonald’s announced that each restaurant will have the power to choose which items they sell, with the option to provide a reduced menu after 2:00 PM. So enjoy your evening Egg McMuffin while you can.
The St. Louis, MO McDonald’s regional advertising manager, Dick Brams, dreamed up this gateway fast food meal in 1977. The first Happy Meal was circus-themed, and puzzles covered the box. The meal might include a burger, cheeseburger, fries, cookies, and a drink. The toy was either a stencil, a wallet, an ID bracelet, a lock puzzle, a spinning top, or an eraser. Everything had a McDonald’s theme.
The first Disney collaboration occurred in 1987. In the 2000s, McDonald’s added cartons of milk, juice boxes, and apple slices with caramel in an attempt to please health-conscious parents. However, Happy Meals still face controversies — they were banned in San Francisco in 2010. Plus, a father in Quebec wanted to sue the brand for allegedly advertising to children.
A chef and meat-restructuring expert invented the McRib in 1981. Yep, you read that right. The McRib is actually a bunch of different meat parts mixed together and shaped into something that looks vaguely like a boneless back rib. It was supposed to mimic barbecued pulled pork.
A once-permanent menu item, the sandwich mysteriously vanished in 1985. But it does periodically reemerge for limited amounts of time. It’s not unpopular, though; all the copycats out there prove that! However, the McRib contains cheaper cuts of meat, that get expensive over time. Consequently, McDonald’s likes to keep prices in check by only releasing the sandwich on a periodic basis. So don’t miss the McRib’s next visit.
McDonald’s worked on a chicken-based menu item since the late ’70s. At the time, the scientific community and the public worried about the link between burgers’ high fat content and increasing cholesterol. Chicken was considered a relatively healthy alternative.
According to TIME, McDonald’s chef Rene Arend, who traded a job cooking for fancy celebrities to develop fast food, first tried a chicken pot pie and then fried chicken. When McDonald’s owner Kroc suggested the company give up on chicken and do onion nuggets instead, Arend joked that they try a chicken nugget. Then, he chopped up tiny bits of chicken and deep-fried them, and a new legend emerged.
They had breakfast sorted, so McDonald’s shifted focus to pleasing customers who wanted more dinner options. Specifically, the company looked at growing pizza restaurants like Domino’s and Pizza Hut and decided to take a bite out of that business. Unfortunately, pizza took a bite out of them. The speedy ovens monopolized way too much kitchen space, and the pizzas took too long to cook compared to the rest of the McDonald’s products.
In the end, after years of experimenting, McDonald’s went back to what they knew. However, certain franchises in West Virginia, Florida, and Ohio sold pizza as late as 2017.
Another product of the health-conscious ’80s, the McDonald’s salads earned a lot of praise. The style and quality of the options varied over time, and it wasn’t until 2003 that the chain really started advertising their salads as premium. In part, McDonald’s wanted to respond to Super Size Me, which put a spotlight on the unhealthy elements of McDonald’s meals. Certain people question the menu items’ actual healthiness (with dressing, some of the salads contain more calories, fat, and salt than a Big Mac). However, the leafy bowls secured the spot as the eighth most popular menu item.
The Cheddar Melt sounds delicious in principle. It’s a quarter pound burger topped with onions and cheddar cheese sauce. A rye bun holds everything together. The cheddar melt held on until the ’90s when it was officially discontinued. But it briefly reappeared in 2004 and then again for a limited time in 2014 in Wisconsin and Michigan during a promo with the Green Bay Packers. Meanwhile, fans try to create their own versions. So maybe it’s due for (another) comeback.
Yes, this was part of McDonald’s attempt to slide into the dinner market. In a few southern states, the chain tested pasta options in 1989, including lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, and spaghetti with meatballs. Then they tentatively moved the pasta to a couple of locations in New York and Tennessee in the early ’90s. But eventually, McDonald’s admitted defeat. However, if you’re desperate to try fast food pasta, you can go to the Philippines. Those Mickey D’s locations sell McSpaghetti; it comes topped with marina sauce, sausage or beef, and shredded cheese.
Buffalo wings are an incredibly popular meal; they nearly rival burgers. So it’s no wonder McDonald’s wanted to edge their way into the lucrative, spicy fried chicken market. The company tried to do just that in 1990 with the introduction of Mighty Wings. Unfortunately, McDonald’s customers weren’t ready for the spice or the price. By 2003, the wings disappeared. A brief resurrection in 2013 didn’t go any better, and despite 2016 rumors, it seems that McDonald’s let this wing go for good.
Despite Ray Kroc’s initial anti-breakfast stance, it seems like new breakfast items make a better impression on customers than other McDonald’s menu options. McDonald’s burritos were first created by Houston, TX, franchise owners Nelly and Dominic Quijana. The couple opened their initial McDonald’s franchise in 1985 and decided the menu needed to expand. Accordingly, they created a breakfast burrito stuffed with sausage, green peppers, onions, eggs, and cheese. The addition went national in 1991.
Apple pies graced the McDonald’s menu since 1968, but they were deep-fried rather than baked. For 40 years, the company played around with different pie fillings and designs. In 1992, though, we met the Baked Apple Pie; it had a cherry twin, too. Some people vehemently raged against the new baked version. Tempers flared again in 2018 when McDonald’s announced yet another pie change. This time, they claimed to want to make the dessert healthier.
In the early ’90s, the Chicago Bulls basketball team was one of the best in the country, and Michael Jordan was arguably the most famous athlete in the world. Jordan already appeared in an ad campaign for McDonald’s in 1987. Then he appeared in another famous ad in 1993 with Larry Bird. That same year, Jordan got a special sandwich named just for him. A cheeseburger on a sesame bun, the McJordan Special had sliced onions, pickles, bacon, and barbecue sauce. It was only available for a limited time in the Chicago area, but people still try to recreate it.
To make a Daily Double, the fast food chain takes a burger bun, adds a patty topped with cheese, and adds another patty on top of that. Iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, and, er, the top half of the bun finish it off. The Daily Double’s original run was short, but it made a comeback in 2012. Unfortunately, people felt that it wasn’t worth double the price of the very similar McDouble. Consequently, it vanished.
A franchise owner in Canada created this combination of soft serve ice cream and crushed up candy (or Oreo if you have great taste) in 1995. The special mixer spoon didn’t come around until 1997, though, thanks to a Hawaiian creator. Available in 99 countries, McFlurries are incredibly popular now. Many McDonald’s locations promote their own special versions. The U.K. has a Cadbury Creme Egg edition that’s typically available for Easter while Japan shops serve a matcha green tea flavor. In Indonesia, you can get strawberry cheesecake or coconut charcoal McFlurry. The possibilities are endless, much like the McFlurry’s appeal.
If this sounds like an attempt to make the regular old Filet-O-Fish sound fancy, that’s because it was. The original Filet-O-Fish released way back in 1965 with Cincinnati, OH, franchise owner Lou Groen. He wanted to give his Catholic customers something to eat on Fridays when they traditionally abstained from red meat.
The deluxe version was part of a line of McDonald’s products released in the U.S. and Canada in 1996; the company attempted to appeal to a more adult market. But the sandwich was basically the same as before. Even though it cost a dollar more, the deluxe version only added lettuce (which could be added to the original sandwich for free anyway). People didn’t seem impressed, so McDonald’s relented and brought back the regular old Filet-O-Fish. It’s still confusing people today:
Has anyone actually ever eaten a Filet O Fish from McDonalds?
— Cade MacQuarrie (@cade_mac) June 5, 2019
By 1997, McDonald’s major rival Burger King dominated the super-burger space with their Whopper Burger, a quarter pound of beef in a sesame bun, topped with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, white onions, ketchup, and mayo. Known as the Big Tasty in Europe, the Big ‘N Tasty tried to compete with the Whopper; it cost only just 99 cents. The Double Cheeseburger replaced it on the Dollar Menu in 2003, though. And McDonald’s discontinued it in 2011, but the Big N’ Tasty did make a brief comeback in the U.K. for the summer of 2017.
Made from whole pieces of fried breaded chicken and served with a selection of sauces, Chicken Selects were tested in 1998 in packages of three, five, and 10. They made it to the permanent menu in 2003, and by 2004 McDonald’s had sold 65 million pounds of them. But in 2013, amid much outcry, the company unceremoniously dropped the strips. They returned briefly in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2017, when a new product called Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Tenders joined the menu, that people felt chicken tender order was restored.
McDonald’s didn’t take the easy way out when it came to debuting their bagels. They initially tested them in a few New York locations. The New Yorkers who consider their home state to be the bagel heartland weren’t impressed. Consequently, McDonald’s didn’t plan to release the sandwiches to all of the chains, but now customers can buy Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Bagels whenever the fancy strikes.
This layered sundae of fruit, low-fat vanilla yogurt, and crunchy granola might not have the classic meaty appeal of the Egg McMuffin or a Bacon, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Bagel. But given that the parfait contains actual fruit, including antioxidant-packed blueberries, as well as calcium, it’s not surprising nutritionists call this one of the healthiest options at McDonald’s.
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