On Monday, the company announced three versions of a new chicken sandwich, which will be available nationwide on February 24: The Crispy Chicken Sandwich, topped with pickles and served on a potato roll, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich, which adds a spicy pepper sauce, and the Deluxe Chicken Sandwich, which comes with lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise. McDonald’s told investors in November that it expected a new chicken sandwich this year.
The new products, along with faster drive-thrus and other changes, could help McDonald’s attract more traffic to its restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.
Before the pandemic, the company was losing customers to fast-casual chains and sophisticated snack bars. The number of transactions at its restaurants in the United States that have been open for at least 13 months fell by 1.9% in 2019, according to a filing by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That year, McDonald’s franchise operators warned that the chain needed a better chicken sandwich to win back customers. “JFK called a man on the moon,” they wrote in a letter that summer. “Our call must be a leading category in chicken sandwiches.”
And during a November investor webcast, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said that “a new, long-awaited crispy chicken sandwich” would arrive in the U.S. menus this year.
Chicken is a good bet for McDonald’s, he explained.
“Globally, the chicken category is almost double that of beef,” he said at the time. “It is growing faster and represents a significant opportunity,” he said. “Developing an excellent chicken reputation represents one of our greatest aspirations. We want customers to choose McDonald’s for chicken.”
Erlinger added that the new sandwich “would boost our chicken journey”, suggesting that more chicken products will come. McDonald’s launched Spicy Chicken McNuggets in the fall, its first new McNugget flavor in the United States since the item was first introduced to the American menu in 1983.
Chains with a popular chicken sandwich have been rewarded by customers. Popeyes, which saw its new sandwich sell out just two weeks after it was launched nationally in August 2019, cited the sandwich as one of the reasons for its continued growth during the pandemic. Chick-fil-A, known for its line of chicken sandwiches, has been growing steadily for years.
Recently, the competition has been heating up. Wendy’s launched a new version of its chicken sandwich in October. The brand’s classic chicken sandwich, made with fried chicken fillet, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and mayonnaise, replaced the Homestyle chicken sandwich, which had been on Wendy’s menu for at least a decade. During the summer, KFC tested a new premium chicken sandwich called KFC Chicken Sandwich.
– CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.