23 Apr 2023 After 56 years, McDonald’s is changing its Big Mac

“If ever there were an unchanging monument to the American consumer, the Big Mac would have to be it.”

The double-decker Big Mac: dreamed up by a McDonald’s franchisee in 1967, given its name by a 21-year-old secretary, and craved, bought, and eaten by billions of people literally millions of hungry customers every single day.

It’s been around so long and is such an institution it’s hard to think of anything to rival it…. But, wait. It’s changing….

McDonald’s has announced that it’s going to change the Big Mac – making what it calls “small but tasty improvements” to the iconic product. Here’s what the changes include:

• “Softer, pillowy buns that are freshly toasted to a golden brown”,
• “Perfectly melted cheese”,
• “Juicier, caramelised flavour from adding white onions to the patties while they’re still on the grill,” and
• “Even more of everyone’s favourite Big Mac sauce”.

McDonald’s says it’s already rolled out the changes in Australia, Canada and Belgium (“to rave reviews”), and introduced it in some West Coast US cities.

Chad Schafer, the Senior Director of Culinary Innovation at McDonald’s USA, explains the rationale behind these updates: “We found that small changes, like tweaking our process to get hotter, meltier cheese and adjusting our grill settings for a better sear, added up to a big difference in making our burgers more flavourful than ever.”

That said, the history of corporate innovation is littered like a Big Mac wrapper with examples of companies that set out to improve iconic products, only to find it was much riskier than they might have thought.

It will be interesting to see how customers react to the new and improved Big Mac. No word on it happening locally as yet.

Source: Inc.Africa, McDonald’s