On Monday, the company announced three versions of a new one chicken sandwich, which will be available nationally on February 24: Crispy chicken pickle, covered with pickles and served on a potato roll, Spicy chicken sandwich, which adds a spicy pepper sauce, and Sandwich Deluxe chicken, which comes with salad, tomatoes and mayonnaise. McDonald’s told investors in November to expect 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 state-of-the-art burgers. The number of transactions at its US restaurants, which have been open for at least 13 months, fell 1.9% in 2019, according to a deposit with 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 one man a month,” they wrote in a letter that summer. “Our appeal should be a main category of chicken sandwich.”
And during a November online show for investors, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said that “a new, delicious, long-awaited, new chicken sandwich” will arrive in the USA menus this year.
The chicken is a good bet for McDonald’s, he explained.
“Globally, the chicken category is almost twice as high as beef,” he said at the time. “It’s growing faster and it’s a significant opportunity,” he said. “Building a reputation for big chickens is one of our highest aspirations. We want customers to choose McDonald’s for chickens.”
Erlinger added that the new sandwich “will start our chicken journey”, suggesting more chicken products. McDonald’s launched Spicy Chicken McNuggets in the fall, its first new McNugget flavor in the United States since the product was introduced to the US menu in 1983.
The chains with a popular chicken sandwich were rewarded by customers. Popeyes, who saw his new sandwich offering sell out just two weeks after its nationwide launch in August 2019, pointed to the sandwich as a reason why it continued to grow during the pandemic. Chick-fil-A, known for its line of chicken sandwiches, has been growing steadily for years.
Recently, the competition has warmed up. Wendy’s launched a new version of its chicken sandwich in October. The brand’s classic chicken sandwich, made with fried chicken fillet, salad, tomatoes, pickles and mayonnaise, has replaced the Homestyle Chicken Sandwich, which has been on the Wendy menu for at least a decade. During the summer, KFC tested a new premium chicken sandwich called the KFC Chicken Sandwich.
– CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.