McDonald's is one of the most successful fast food
chains of all time, but it's also had its fair share of failures.
Some of them were flawed to begin with, while others were done in by circumstances beyond
their control. Keep watching to discover the biggest flops in McDonald's history.
Way back in the 80s, McDonald's decided to up its cachet by adding some continental swagger
to its humble homegrown burgers and fries. Banking on the idea that everybody loves pasta,
the chain launched a spaghetti and meatballs meal that went by the name of McSpaghetti. But
despite the general popularity of spaghetti, it was difficult to convince customers
why they should orderi Italian pasta with tomato sauce at a burger joint. Anyone can
make spaghetti at home, while it's a lot harder to reproduce Big Macs and McDonald's fries.
McDonald's learned this lesson fairly quickly and McSpaghetti was discontinued when it was still in
its al dente phase. If you feel you somehow missed out on this historic flop, you should know that
tomato sauce-doused McSpaghetti still lives on in the Philippines. Considerably closer to home, the
largest McDonald's restaurant in the world, which is in Orlando, Florida, also offers McSpaghetti
and other McPasta dishes such as lasagna and fettuccine Alfredo to curious customers.
In 1989, McDonald's bet on Italy once again when it rolled out the McPizza. At the time,
the chain was trying to bolster its lackluster dinner-time business. With pizza sales growing
at a rate of 10 percent a year, McDonald's decided to take on reigning champ Pizza Hut.
As it prepared for battle, McDonald's invested heavily in pizza artillery. Efforts ranged
from remodeling kitchens with special ovens and warming bins to expanding drive-through windows
to widths compatible with pizza boxes. The company even created a patented oven that used
superheated air to bake a crispy-crusted pizza in five-and-a-half minutes flat. In response, Pizza
Hut promptly started airing prime-time commercials that mocked McDonald's pizza dough as "McFrozen."
Despite its valiant efforts and sophisticated technology, McDonald's was waging a losing
battle. It took 11 minutes to cook the made-to-order, slow-baking pies. This was
a small eternity for a restaurant whose entire philosophy revolved around speedy service. Even
though it scaled down the family-sized pizzas to more fast-food friendly individual pies, McPizzas
struggled to survive and didn't last long in most locations. In 2017, the last two McPizza-selling
outposts removed them from their menus, thereby surrendering McDonald's stake in the pizza wars.
"My guess is corporate just found out they were still selling them."
In 1977, McDonald's Corporation Founder Ray Kroc
wrote in his autobiography Grinding It Out, The Making of McDonald's,
"There's no telling what's inside a hot dog's skin,
and our standard of quality just wouldn't permit that kind of item."
Unfortunately not everyone at McDonald's read Kroc's book. A decade after his death in 1984,
some corporate heirs decided to foolishly go against his wishes. In the summer of 1995,
McDonald's introduced its first-ever McHotDog to little acclaim. Despite lackluster sales,
the chain stubbornly persisted, offering McHotDogs off and on in a number of locations throughout the
years, only to finally discontinue them due to an unwavering lack of enthusiasm.
Setting aside Kroc's misgivings, it's a bit surprising that hot dogs proved to be such a flop
at a burger joint. Perhaps it ultimately came down to aesthetics. A sizzling,
char-grilled burger topped by a zesty bright pop of orange cheese is far more visually
appetizing than a pallid, putty-colored hot dog laying dormant in a doughy bun.
In the early 60s, McDonald's restaurants in certain markets were taking a financial
hit due to Catholics abstaining from eating meat on Fridays. One franchisee, Lou Groen,
owned a McDonald's in Cincinnati, whose population at the time was 87 percent Catholic. His solution
was the unsinful burger alternative of a battered halibut and cheese sandwich. When Groen took his
idea to Ray Kroc, the latter hated the thought of his stores stinking like fish.
But part of his reaction may have also been due to the fact that he had his
own non-meat alternative: the Hula Burger. This vegetarian sandwich
featured a slice of grilled pineapple with two slices of cheese on a toasted bun.
In the spirit of competition, Kroc challenged Groen to a culinary duel. On Good Friday in 1962,
both sandwiches would be sold side-by-side at select locations,
with the winner being added to the McDonald's menu. At the end of the day,
the results were irrefutable: Hula Burger: 6, Filet-O-Fish: 350. The Filet-O-Fish went
on to become a nationwide best-seller, while it was "Aloha!" time for the Hula.
The Filet-O-Fish was such a winner for McDonald's that in 2013, when the burger behemoth suffered
its first sales decline in over a decade, it decided to take drastic measures. After
axing the president of McDonald's U.S., the company proceeded to roll out the closest thing
imaginable to the original sandwich in the form of McFish Bites. By then, the Filet-O-Fish's original
haddock had been swapped out for cheaper Alaskan pollock. Shaped into snack-friendly nuggets,
McFish Bites were breaded, deep-fried, and served with a tangy tartar dipping sauce.
At the time, McDonald's was getting a lot of flak from health advocacy groups
who accused the chain of encouraging kids to eat junk food. In response,
McDonald's added McFish Bites to its Happy Meals, while reducing the fries and adding
apple slices. The chain also sought to seduce adults by offering three sizes of packaging,
the better with which to share the nuggets or eat them on the go. Yet, despite all the ongoing
love for the Filet-O-Fish, the relative health benefits of deep fried pollock, and the many
conveniences of bite-sized items, customers just didn't take the bait. After their February 2013
launch, McFish Bites were discontinued later that same year due to poor sales.
McFish Bites isn't the only maritime-inspired McDonald's meal that ended up sinking. In 2013,
a steep decline in the wholesale price of Maine lobster led the coveted crustacean to become a
mass-market staple. It ended up washing onto McDonald's menus in the form of the McDonald's
Lobster Roll. The "McLobster" was actually the Golden Arches' second stab at a lobster roll,
as the first aborted attempt occurred in 1992. This time, the economics seemed more
favorable. Lower overall costs coupled with McDonald's ability to purchase cheaper claw,
knuckle, and leg meat in high volumes allowed the company to charge a relatively affordable $7.99
for the usually high-end delicacy. Nevertheless, a lot of customers
weren't biting. As a Maine-based marine biologist told The New Yorker,
"If I want a lobster roll, I could think of a dozen places between here
and the nearest McDonald's where I'd get it."
The McLobster flop followed that of the McCrab sandwich, which McDonald's hoped
would tempt crabcake-loving traditionalists in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. McDonald's
crab cakes were actually handmade to ensure lumps of crab meat were
visible. McCrab co-inventor Bernie Carr stressed his belief that customers wanted to see the crab
meat. But they evidently didn't want to see the McCrab, which skulked away, never to return.
Although McDonald's is always on the prowl for the next successful McProduct, some McNovelties
are less about substance and more about style. Case in point: the McDLT. By the time the 80s
rolled around, McDonald's was apparently receiving complaints about the swamp-like ecosystem that
emerged after placing soggy vegetables onto an otherwise crispy burger and toasted bun. Its
seemingly brilliant solution was to completely overhaul the burger biome by creating the McDLT.
A pioneering example of user-friendly, interactive food, the McDLT was a McDonald's
burger with the typical lettuce and tomato, but deconstructed via a specially designed
Styrofoam container with two compartments. One contained the toasted bottom bun and grilled
burger while the other held the top bun, cheese, toppings, and condiments. The idea was that you
could assemble your own burger right before taking a bite out of it. In doing so, you'd
preserve the textural integrity of both the hot, grilled components and the fresh, crispy ones.
Alas, the McDLT also featured some notable design flaws. Lumping the cheese in the cool compartment
prevented it from melting deliciously on top of the burger. And even in the gas-guzzling
Reagan years, all that nasty Styrofoam was already considered environmentally unfriendly. Ultimately,
not even Jason Alexander singing the praises of the McDLT could stave off rapid extinction.
"Could be the best tasting lettuce-and-tomato hamburger ever!"
Sometimes it pays to stick to what you know best, which McDonald's should've realized
when it decided to infringe upon KFC's hallowed territory with the launch of the Mighty Wing.
Originally introduced in 1990, Mighty Wings were discontinued in 2003 before plans were
laid for an epic comeback in 2013. Following a year of testing and tweaking, McDonald's was so
sure that its revived poultry product would fly that it stocked up on 50 million pounds of wings.
"Actually I think it tastes a little bit like KFC, is what I would compare it to."
Yet despite all the careful prep work, Mighty Wings suffered from hewing a little too true
to their name. Aside from significantly heavy breading, the wings were also apparently too
mighty spicy for some tastes. Ultimately, though, the wings' main failure were their mighty prices.
At more than $1 per wing for orders under 10 wings, the price wasn't exactly the
most competitive on the market. In the end, sales were so dismal that McDonald's was left
literally holding the bag, a bag that was filled with 10 million frozen
bone-in chicken wings. Franchises tried to mitigate their losses by holding clearance sales.
Many reduced the prices of their wings to 60 cents, which turned out to be a mighty good deal.
McDonald's has clearly had its share of faulty products and packaging, but one of its most
epic failures was due to a very bad case of PR. On paper, the McAfrika seemed like an unthreatening,
if unoriginal, new product. It consisted of a standard cheese-topped beef patty
accompanied by tomatoes and salad, sandwiched between two wedges of
nutritious pita. There wasn't anything vaguely African about the sandwich aside from its name,
and that's exactly why all hell broke loose. The McAfrika was launched in 2002 in Norway,
one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, in the midst of a severe famine
in southern Africa that had devastated the lives of about 12 million people.
Without having tasted it, outraged Norwegians, including fundraising and
aid agencies, referred to the poorly named burger's launch as "distasteful." Activists
protested outside McDonald's restaurants in Oslo by distributing to customers "catastrophe
crackers," the protein-packed biscuits that were being donated to starvation victims. In response,
McDonald's Norway attempted damage control by allowing aid agencies to place collection boxes
and fundraising posters in restaurants where the offending burgers were being sold. Eventually, the
company got around to actually discontinuing the McAfrika, only to re-release it as the "McAfrica"
during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, along with the McEurope, McAmerica, McAsia, and McAustralia. But
a spelling change wasn't exactly enough to redeem this politically incorrect sandwich.
Another infamous case of a theoretically appetizing product combined with a disastrous
marketing campaign was the Arch Deluxe. Having already won over young consumers with Happy Meals,
McDonald's set its sights on an increasingly aging American population
in search of more sophisticated, adult offerings. The Arch Deluxe was a basic
burger dressed up with fancy fixings such as peppered bacon and a stone ground mustard sauce.
To emphasize its adult credentials, McDonald's spent some big boy bucks,
to the tune of $200 million, on touting "the burger with the grown-up taste".
To entice gourmands, one commercial featured McDonald's Executive Chef
Andrew Selvaggio preparing the burger from a sleek, gourmet kitchen bereft of
any grease. To underscore the sandwich's supposed maturity, another spot featured
6-year-old rappers reacting to the burger with a synchronized shout of disgust.
"Want an Arch Deluxe?" "Yuck!"
Alas, the adults in the room were ultimately put off by the combination of the Arch Deluxe's
unreasonably high calorie count and price. By the time the Arch Deluxe was removed from
the menu in 2000, it had become one of the most expensive flops in fast food history.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Mashed videos about your favorite foods are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.