It’s been 50 years since the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in the UK. Back in 1974, the crowds that flocked to Woolwich, southeast London, couldn’t have known how enthusiastically Britain would take to the McDonald’s menu. Part of the reason for this is the level of burger obsessiveness that exists to this day under the Golden Arches.
“Ray Kroc, who built the McDonald’s empire, said we take the hamburger business more seriously than anybody else,” says McDonald’s head of menu, Thomas O’Neill. That’s the spirit in which the team has made changes to its Big Mac, Quarter Pounder and Cheeseburger for the first time in decades.
The aim is to dial up the deliciousness, but without losing what customers already love. “You make a lot of tiny changes,” O’Neill says, “but the experience needs to be as familiar as ever – just a little better. The last thing we want is for people to try a burger and think, ‘Wow, that’s so different.’”
Tinkering with a classic like the Big Mac isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. How did McDonald’s burger boffins dial up the deliciousness?
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Taste maker
Thomas O’Neill, McDonald’s head of menu
Full commitment
O’Neill takes a ‘massive’ bite of burgers for an authentic taste snapshot
To find out more, visit McDonald’s Plan for Change
steps to burger heaven
How the best got better
Photography by Morgan Silk
There are fundamentals that even O’Neill, a man so obsessed with flavour that he takes wine qualifications in his spare time, would not mess with. The beef patties are still 100 per cent British and Irish beef. Each burger in the core range features new brioche-style buns, beef seared to new levels of juiciness and, for the Big Mac and Double Cheeseburger, even more savoury oomph comes from adding onions at the grill.
With crunchy lettuce and cheese ready to melt onto hotter burgers, there’s plenty to love. But these are not the kind of changes that are made overnight.
When taste testing, O’Neill’s approach is to take a “massive” bite. “I’ve got to experience this like a customer,” he says. He first tried early versions of the innovations a few years ago and was “blown away”, but he was conscious of the significance of the task. “You don’t rush to make a change like this happen.”
As with any new menu item, the improved burgers were tasted by customers before being tried by franchisees. Once the new formula was agreed, the next step was to train staff to nail the techniques: “How do you make it happen in nearly 1,500 restaurants, how do 177,000 members of staff understand these changes and implement them in a way that the customer is going to love?”
New technology is part of the answer, including super-sensitive grills able to recognise each patty and adjust cooking time accordingly.
All this happens alongside McDonald’s fast-paced schedule of innovation. Every month, the McDonald’s Chefs’ Council meets to work out where customers might like its menu to go next (the limited-time-only, triple-patty Hat Trick burger is one recent success).
Meanwhile, McDonald’s works with more than 23,000 British and Irish farmers, and invests in the latest research to help support its farmers to become more sustainable and resilient for the long term.
“We’re a market leader,” O’Neill says. “We have to behave like one.” And if that means changing the way hundreds of thousands of burgers are made every day to make them hotter, juicier and even more delicious, then McDonald’s is all for it.
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Made with 100 per cent British and Irish beef, these are the burgers McDonald’s was built on. But they’re now seared differently to be even juicier.
THE PATTY
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Made in British bakeries, the new buns have a rich, sweet, brioche-style flavour and are toasted for longer to help make a hotter burger.
THE BUN
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Onions give that bit of extra bite to a Big Mac. Now they’re added at the grill so they can infuse the patty with flavour.
THE ONIONS
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Hotter beef patties help ensure that the classic cheese melts more and with an even smoother texture.
THE CHESSE
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