Fresh beef replaces frozen in Quarter Pounders

NEW YORK — The Quarter Pounder is getting a makeover.

McDonald’s said Tuesday that it is serving Quarter Pounders with fresh beef rather than frozen patties at about a quarter of its U.S. restaurants, a switch it first announced about a year ago as it works to appeal to customers who want fresher foods. It will roll out fresh beef Quarter Pounders to most of its 14,000 U.S. restaurants by May.

The fast-food giant, which has relied on frozen patties since the 1970s, said workers will cook up the fresh beef on a grill when the burger is ordered.

“The result is a hotter, juicier burger,” said Chris Kempczinski, who oversees McDonald’s Corp.’s restaurants in the U.S.

Its pricier Signature Crafted burgers, stuffed with guacamole or bacon, will also be made with fresh beef since they use the same sized patty as the Quarter Pounder. The Big Mac and its other burgers, however, will still be made with frozen beef.

Fresh beef has always been used by rival Wendy’s, which aired a Super Bowl commercial last month criticizing the “flash frozen” beef at McDonald’s. Representatives at Wendy’s Co. did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, but the company was less shy on Twitter, where it tweeted that the fresh beef was “only in some” McDonald’s burgers, “not even all of them.”

McDonald’s had signalled that it might use fresh beef for more burgers. This year, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company confirmed that it was testing a fresh beef burger that used a patty that was slightly smaller than the one in the Quarter Pounder, but larger than the one in its hamburgers and cheeseburgers.

McDonald’s Canada, which sources all of its beef from Canadian farms, mainly in Alberta and Saskatchewan, said it did not have plans to introduce fresh beef at its restaurants.

The change at McDonald’s in the U.S. is the latest as it seeks to shed its junk-food image. It has removed artificial preservatives from Chicken McNuggets and replaced the apple juice in Happy Meals with one that has less sugar.

“Fresh in the mind of the consumer really has a better-for-you connotation,” said David Henkes, a senior principal at Technomic, a food industry market research firm.