The company announced Monday 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 mayo. 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 and after the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, the company lost customers to fast casual chains and senior citizens. The number of transactions at U.S. restaurants that were open for at least 13 months decreased by 1.9% in 2019, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In that year, McDonald’s franchisees warned that the chain needed a better chicken sandwich to win back customers. “JFK asked for a man on the moon,” they wrote in a letter that summer. “Our call should be a leading chicken sandwich.”
And during a webcast for investors in November, Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, said that a much-anticipated, delicious, new crispy chicken sandwich would hit the US menus this year.
Chicken is a good bet for McDonald’s, he explained.
“Globally, the chicken category is almost twice as big as beef,” he said at the time. “It’s growing faster and represents an important opportunity,” he said. “Developing a reputation for big chicken is one of our biggest aspirations. We want customers to choose McDonald’s for chicken.”
Erlinger added that the new sandwich would make a start to our chicken journey, suggesting that more chicken products would come. McDonald’s introduced Spicy Chicken McNuggets in the fall, the first new McNugget flavor in the United States since the article was launched on the U.S. menu in 1983.
Chains with a popular chicken sandwich were rewarded by customers. Popeyes, who saw that his new sandwich offering sold out only two weeks after it was launched nationally in August 2019, cited the sandwich as one of the reasons it continued to grow during the pandemic. Chick-fil-A, known for its line of chicken sandwiches, has been growing for years.
Recently, the competition has intensified. Wendy’s launched a new version of its chicken sandwich in October. The brand’s Classic Chicken Sandwich, made with a fried chicken fillet, lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo, replaced the Homestyle Chicken Sandwich, which has been on Wendy’s menu for at least a decade. During the summer, KFC tested a new, premium chicken sandwich called KFC Chicken Sandwich.
Jordan Valinsky of CNN contributed to this report.