McDonald's looks to sell quality: the makeover

[kellycolorado]

Speaking personally, my pomme frites preferably don't come from ConAgra potatoes and have partially hydrogenated oils and sodium acid pyrophosphate.

I prefer simply organic potatoes in peanut oil or a similar oil with some salt.

-Kelly

Pomme frites = good

french fries = bad?

B.S.  Why?

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[jsolomon]

Speaking personally, my pomme frites preferably don't come from ConAgra potatoes and have partially hydrogenated oils and sodium acid pyrophosphate. 

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My biology, chemistry, and biochemistry background says otherwise about the sodium acid pyrophosphate.

Actually, the sodium acid pyrophosphate isn't that bad for you. It just sounds all chemical-y, so people say "eww, I don't want to eat tha-AAA-at".

[Toliver]

Has anyone taken one for the team and tried the new McDonald's Angus Third Pounders?

"McDonald's Reportedly Testing High-End Angus "Third Pound" Burger"

I've seen them on local menus but didn't take notice of the reportedly higher price.

They look a lot like Carl's Jr. burgers (not as flat as the usual McDonald's burgers).

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The TV commercials for the burgers are aimed straight at the same Carl's Jr. - Burger King market (male, from teens on up to about mid-20's). On the positive side, Paris Hilton hasn't appeared in any of the spots yet.

[Gifted Gourmet]

While I have not tried the McDonald's Angus Burger, I have had the Angus one at Burger King .. big and very meaty but the barbecue sauce slathered over it killed any possible taste of the meat .. that, and all the other stuff they put on a burger ... I am, for what it's worth, a burger purist who enjoys my hamburgers thick and rare with few embellishments ...

[dividend]

In part, what McD's is doing is courting, too, but in a transparently slick way, trying to appeal to the slacker, older teen/college age crowd which is supposed to be too savvy to the traditional ploys of advertizing to take them seriously. So, the company winks back.  See, we're not taking ourselves too seriously, either, ya know.  It's a bit of a take on car ads that have the same kind of guys driving around town in their VW (? Honda, whatever) picking up couches from the curb.  It is not trying to grab this crowd.  As Chris and Carrot Top have pointed out, that crowd was bought in childhood.  It is trying to retain them, as you say, by bringing them into their young adulthood when they get their first jobs.

It's also playing with gender roles, foregrounding sexual difference while catering to the young male (in this case heterosexual) viewer who has a keen interest in what makes girls girls and desperately wants to crack the code before they're all men and women. 

So, it's all just you know, low key, playful, a bit of a narrative going on here, just hangin' out.....until suddenly, the girl tries to be one of the guys by joining in and riffing on the word "chicken" which all three of her companions have done. 

All of a sudden, the atmosphere changes.  It's charged.  SHE cannot play the same game.  When she utters, "Sheek-ON!....On!" it sounds like a woman satisfied in bed to them....or what they've heard happens there. Ut oh.  They look at her.  She looks at them, as if saying "Oh, wadda I do?"

What is interesting in the midst of all of this is the product that is being hawked.  You'd think it would McNuggets.  They're all not into pressed button-down shirts.  They're cool.  But, no, it's Chicken Selects!  The more refined, more sophisticated, more adult version of the nuggets that they had as kids.  Now, I don't want to make too much of the fact that we're talking breast meat here, in the age when sitcom writers think you only have to talk about hooters, boobs and so forth and man, are you funny....no, that really isn't the point.

Instead, this is intimations of maturity.  These kids are still kids.  But they're moving up.

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This is so true, and well said. This is how alot of marketing aimed at the very young adult demographic is. I'm pretty sure the next step is going to be a much more widespread use of fake viral marketing (ala Snakes on a Plane) by huge companies that takes that kind of anti-marketing to the next level. It's already happening. A pizza chain (I think it was Domino's, but I could be wrong), released a short YouTube video that looked like a home movie of a 16 year old girl named MacKenzie freaking out because her Daddy bought her a convertible that was the wrong color. A charicature that was almost beleivable. Then later, "she" posted a follow up video where she disussed selling the car on e-bay for $9.99. The ebay auction was a big promotion of the pizza chain. Kids are getting smarter and more cynical, so advertisers either parody themselves with a giant wink, or pretend to not be advertising at all.

The thing I found most interesting in this thread is the idea that there's something inherently wrong with McDonald's or Frito Lay marketing themselves as healthier, and the attitude that such claims cannot possibly be true. Looking at the Frito Lay site, I see that they've given up using any partially hydrogenated oils in their chips. When you buy a bag of regular Lays, the ingredients read: potatoes, sunflower oil, salt. In my mind that's better than reading: reconstitued dehydrated potato product, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, right? Why are their claims about taking healthful steps met with such cynacism? If McDonald's really is taking steps to use higher quality ingredients, surely that is a good thing on some level.

[Kent D]

Has anyone taken one for the team and tried the new McDonald's Angus Third Pounders?

"McDonald's Reportedly Testing High-End Angus "Third Pound" Burger"

I've seen them on local menus but didn't take notice of the reportedly higher price.

They look a lot like Carl's Jr. burgers (not as flat as the usual McDonald's burgers).

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The TV commercials for the burgers are aimed straight at the same Carl's Jr. - Burger King market (male, from teens on up to about mid-20's). On the positive side, Paris Hilton hasn't appeared in any of the spots yet.

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They haven't made it here to the heartland yet, but even when they do I don't see me making a special trip to try one. If I'm going to pay $4 for a burger, it won't be at McDonalds. For that price, when you add fries and a drink, I could make a round of GOOD burgers for my entire family.

[Carrot Top]

Has anyone taken one for the team and tried the new McDonald's Angus Third Pounders?

"McDonald's Reportedly Testing High-End Angus "Third Pound" Burger"

I've seen them on local menus but didn't take notice of the reportedly higher price.

They look a lot like Carl's Jr. burgers (not as flat as the usual McDonald's burgers).

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The TV commercials for the burgers are aimed straight at the same Carl's Jr. - Burger King market (male, from teens on up to about mid-20's). On the positive side, Paris Hilton hasn't appeared in any of the spots yet.

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I tried one, Toliver, while taking the kids through the drive-through a while ago. The "Angus" designation made me curious.

It was disgusting.

[Toliver]

I tried one, Toliver, while taking the kids through the drive-through a while ago. The "Angus" designation made me curious.

It was disgusting.

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Sorry it was a bad burger!

What were the big differences between their normal burgers and the Angus burgers? I can't imagine them wandering too far, flavor-wise, from the hamburgers that made them such a success.

They had a very quiet ad campaign to promote the new burgers from the 8th to the 11th. I heard one radio ad that said if you showed up at a local McDonald's between the hours of Noon and 2pm during the last four days, you could try the burger for free. I don't know if you had to buy anything else. Unfortunately, I couldn't take advantage of the offer. I'll see if I can get around to trying one this week.

Thanks for taking one for the team, though.

[Carrot Top]

It's been a while since I had one of their usual burgers, so I have to rely on "taste-memory", but there was not anything too essentially different of major proportions, to my mind, between the two, except maybe a bit of a denser flavor profile and, uh. . .more of it.

It could be that my perceptions were skewed by the fact that I was hopeful of finding something that tastes like Hardee's Six Dollar Burger, which I really like sometimes (mostly because of the way it smells, for some reason ) but which sends me reeling to the couch to lay there moaning, a useless shell of a person, for a while after the rare times I do indulge.

McDonald's has been freaking my son out lately, which is strange, for it used to be his very favorite. (He's thirteen, barely.) He has switched his fast-food allegiance to Subway or to BK if that is the only thing around when we are out and need to eat quickly. This happened after being served one day by a rather unfortunate-looking fellow at the drive-through window who looked more than slightly unkempt to put it mildly, and whose hands smelled like urine when he handed the food out to us. Drew would not eat the food, and will not go back. To *any* McDonald's.

Can't say I'm terribly sad about it, though.

[Toliver]

The other day I received some ad flyers in the mail, one of which had a dollar off coupon for a McDonald's Angus burger. So I took it as a sign (okay, I'm a pushover) to go try one.

I decided to try the most "foreign" one...which was the mushroom & swiss cheese version. The McDonald's in my area have never offered swiss cheese on anything nor have they offered mushrooms on anything, either.

First off, the burgers are relatively expensive compared to their usual burgers. They're a penny shy of four bucks for just the burger. I can buy four double cheeseburgers off the McDonald's Value Menu for that much money so I had high expectations of this burger.

The Mushroom and Swiss Cheese burger is the most "stripped down" version of the three Angus burgers they offer in that you don't get any of the usual toppings with the burger. It's swiss cheese, mushrooms and a slathering of some mayo on the new fancier sesame seed bun. No lettuce, no pickles, no tomatoes, etc.

The mushrooms were quite good. They had a very earthy mushroom-y taste and there were plenty of them on the burger. The swiss cheese was melted though I don't know if the burger sits in its little holding tub with the cheese pre-melted or if they melt it per order. It was white like swiss cheese but it didn't have the tang of a really good swiss cheese. It was sort of generic tasting and really didn't do much to enhance my Angus burger experience.

As for the Angus beef hamburger patty, it is a little thicker than the usual McDonald's hamburger patty. It definitely had a nicer texture to it, more like a homemade patty than the usual fast food hockey pucks that pass for hamburger patties these days.

As for the flavor, well, I wasn't bowled over by it. It's funny but the last third of the burger seemed to be much saltier and "beefier" than the previous two-thirds. I don't know if this means the balance of spices weren't mixed in properly or if it just means that my burger patty had sat in the holding bin in beef juices at an angle so only a third of it got salty. It was just odd to come across the saltiness just as I was fnishing the burger.

I think the biggest drawback to the burger is that it screams for flame broiling (see Carl's Jr/Hardee's) or some other cooking method to give that extra little "oomph" to it to justify the higher cost.

The new McDonald's Mushroom & Swiss Cheese Angus Third Pounder hamburger needs to be sent back to the kitchen labs for further improvement. It's not worth the price, in my opinion.

Perhaps if they added grilled onions to go with the mushrooms...I don't know.

As a quick aside, sometime ago Wendy's offered a burger with grilled onions served on this amazingly soft hamburger bun. I think it may have been their version of a ciabatta (sp?) bun. Where Jack-in-the-Box's ciabatta bun is dense and chewy, Wendy's bun was ethereal and a joy to eat. It was incredible and I hope to see it again.

By the way, the McDOnald's ad campaign for this burger sucks. The ads actually mention the fact that this area is a test market for the new Angus Third Pounders and they basically tell you "hey, go try one...other people in the country aren't this lucky, you schmuck." Thanks for that.

[Toliver]

Surprisingly, the early results are in and the new "McAngus Burgers" (be careful not to drop the "g"! ) are considered a success:

"Supersizing it: McDonald's tests bigger burger"

“For the first 17 days, we're either hitting or exceeding all of our targets at this point,” said Chris Woicik, a McDonald’s regional vice president. “So we're very, very pleased with the early results. But again, we’ve only got 17 days of it so we need a longer time to read it.”

Don't bother watching the accompanying CNBC video of the story as it says pretty much everything the article says.

It's an interesting (albeit, short) point at the end of the article where it speculates that the competition against these new burgers could be the casual dining chains like Applebee's.

However, I don't think that would really be the case since the suggested demographics for the new Angus burgers (young males) is a little different than that of the casual dining chains.

[Toliver]

McDonald's expands on their coffee beverages:

"McDonald's Winds Up for Iced-Coffee Pitch"

It's a free article from the Wall Street Journal online. Don't know how long the link will be active...

From the article:

The fast-food chain this week will begin selling plain, vanilla and hazelnut iced coffees at 700 locations in and around Chicago. The drinks have been sold in some outlets in New York, Boston and other cities for a few months.

McDonald's says it is aiming the ads at consumers age 18 to 34, a younger demographic than customers of its hot-drip coffee....

"As you look at the evolution of iced coffee, it did start off as sort of an upscale drink," says Rob Jackson, regional marketing director for McDonald's Chicago region. But with lower prices and a humorous marketing campaign, McDonald's wants to convey that the "product is available and accessible," he says.

McDonald's will sell all flavors of the coffees in sizes medium and large for $1.69 and $1.99, respectively. Coffeehouses can charge more than $3 for similar sizes of iced coffee, and often charge for adding flavors.

Have you tried them?

Are the drinks good enough to make Mickey-D's an iced-coffee destination?

[foodie52]

"They eat at McD all the time and aren't overweight or unhealthy."

How can you tell if someone is unhealthy unless you're a doctor and do blood work for starters? Just because someone isn't overweight doesn't mean that what's going on inside their body is healthy.

It's easy to justify all of our food choices.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

I really don't understand the rancor towards McD's.

Sure, I'm something of a foodie, but I'm not an uptight food snob.

A McD's burger is no comparison to grass fed, organic ground sirloin, on a freshly baked bun with organic veggies and aged cheddar... but it serves it's purpose. Whether you're in Los Angeles or some in the middle of Kansas, a Big Mac is a Big Mac.

Now, given the choice between a Big Mac and something better, without time or money constraints, I'd always choose the better burger, but I don't always have that choice.

[takadi]

I used to love mcdonald's, but it was just the fact that everytime I ate there, my breath wreaked of this extremely strong almost fishy stench and I would feel very sluggish and nauseous. Also, I've noticed the prices of the burgers have gone up dramatically (or has it always been that way?). If I'm going to pay 3 dollars for a puny little fish sandwich, might as well make my own.

[MarketStEl]

However, I don't think that would really be the case since the suggested demographics for the new Angus burgers (young males) is a little different than that of the casual dining chains.

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Would this be the same demographic Burger King courts with its campy "I Am Man" ads for their Angus humungoburger?

[Toliver]

McDonald's is opening McCafés...their answer to Starbuck's.

Here's the official website:

McCafé website

You can see listings for Dublin locations on the web page. I read a recent article that said they will be debuting in the U.S. shortly, if they haven't already.

Given that McDonald's coffee has been rated very highly, do you think they will make an impact in the coffee house market?

[viva]

There's a McCafe in RTP here in Raleigh. I haven't tried it... but I was curious about what it was. I can now feel free to ignore it.

[Toliver]

McDonald’s plans specialty coffee drinks in ’08

McDonald's Corp. plans to make specialty coffee drinks available in all of its U.S. restaurants by the end of 2008, according to a published report Monday.

The world's largest fast-food chain has been talking openly for nearly a year about plans to add such drinks as lattes and cappuccinos following its success with premium coffee, introduced in 2006.

They estimate such coffee sales will bring in $1 billion annually.

So will consumers bypass the coffee houses if they can get their specialty coffee along with their breakfast all in one place...like at McDonald's?

[GlorifiedRice]

McDs has reduced its fat a great deal over the years and added salads and fruit and lowfat shake mixes, no more transfats etc.

I have absolutely no issue with McDs being unhealthy any longer.

4 star restaurants are far fattier!

I ate at Applebees recently (my son wanted to go) and it was dripping with grease.

Some grilled chicken cesar salads are 1000 calories, far more then a big mac at 300.

Its just a stereotype that refuses to die.

[Zeemanb]

They estimate such coffee sales will bring in $1 billion annually.

So will consumers bypass the coffee houses if they can get their specialty coffee along with their breakfast all in one place...like at McDonald's?

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True story..... I'm attending grad school and the campus has a McDonald's, a Starbucks and an independent coffee house, all about the same distance away. Whether it was weekend mornings or weekday evenings, I'd say at least 1/4 of my classmates would come in with various coffee concoctions from either Sbux or its local competitor. FLASH FORWARD TO EARLY THIS SUMMER....... McDonald's started selling a few different flavored coffee drinks. All I remember is one person coming into class raving about their McD's vanilla latte (or whatever it was), and I'm not exaggerating when I say that within a week or two the MAJORITY of specialty coffee drinks that came through the doors were in McDonald's cups. It really was an amazing phenomenon. No idea if it was the price, speedy service, subliminal advertising, or what.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

For what it's worth, the Iced Coffees at McD's are pretty good.

[emilyr]

For what it's worth, the Iced Coffees at McD's are pretty good.

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ditto to this. i get the hazelnut iced coffee, and it's pretty good. not too sweet, which is a boon to me. plus at $1.69 for a medium (12 oz i think), it's a MUCH better deal than from other coffe shops. but to be fair, i really only get them when i'm really needing caffeine and i'm already getting food at McD's. i don't think i've ever stopped just to get a coffee.

[Toliver]

Regarding their iced coffees, can you get them blended (so the ice is crushed) or do they only serve them over ice?

Also, do they offer the same iced coffees flavors as decaf?

[emilyr]

Regarding their iced coffees, can you get them blended (so the ice is crushed) or do they only serve them over ice?

Also, do they offer the same iced coffees flavors as decaf?

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I've never seen them blended and I don't think they've got blenders behind the counters, so I'm going to go with no, though I'm not positive. I'm also not positive on the decaf. I think you can get the regular coffee decaffed, but I don't know how they make the flavored coffee - with a syrup or if it's infused coffee.