Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
McDonald’s joins food fight with new chicken sandwich
One of the fiercest foodworld fights in recent years has featured fast-food chains vying for supremacy over who can most successfully serve up a fried breast of chicken between two pieces of bread.
This week, the battle has heated up again as McDonald’s enters the fray with its own take on the crispy chicken sandwich.
On Wednesday, McDonald’s released three versions: original, spicy and deluxe, with lettuce and tomato.
McDonald’s knows burgers.
Its Big Mac is recognized all around the globe. But the Golden Arches is years behind its peers in developing a competitive chicken sandwich, much to the frustration of many of its franchise owners.
In recent years, American fast-food customers have embraced chicken and, in particular, so-called Southern-style chicken sandwiches.
A bevy of fast-food restaurants — Wendy’s, Burger King, Shake Shack — have jumped on the crispy chicken-sandwich bandwagon, releasing or making plans to release new chicken sandwiches.
Even Taco Bell is riding the wave, debuting a combination chicken sandwich/ taco next month in limited markets.
For years, the leader of the category was Chickfil-A, which created its original chicken sandwich — with two pickles and a toasted, buttered bun — in 1964.
But the chicken-sandwich battle really started in the summer of 2019, when Popeyes introduced its own fried-chicken sandwich (brioche bun, with pickles). Within days, Popeyes locations around the country saw lines stretched out their doors, and the sandwich became a viral knockout. It became so popular that the chain sold out of months of supply within two weeks and had to pull the sandwich from its menu for more than two months to secure ingredients and negotiate with its suppliers.
McDonald’s journey into chicken sandwiches dates to 2008, when it introduced the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. That was a fried chicken fillet served on a hamburger bun with pickles, an offering some said looked suspiciously like Chick-fil-A’s signature sandwich. The McDonald’s version was discontinued in 2015.
About four years ago, executives at McDonald’s decided it was time to try again.
Using the Southern Style Chicken sandwich as a starting point, chefs and a handful of franchise owners began weekly visits to the company’s kitchens in Chicago to meet with suppliers.
First came the chicken breast.
“We looked at the Southern Chicken sandwich and knew it had to be modernized, reimagined from how it was,” said John Link, who began working at McDonald’s 50 years ago when he was 15 and today owns 13 restaurants in the Hickory, North Carolina, area.
Ultimately, McDonald’s decided, for the first time, to use a potato roll for one of its sandwiches. The roll is toasted with a creamy butter, dispensed through new warmers that are being installed in the restaurants.
“It’s sweet and buttery, a really nice complement to the savory of the chicken,” said Linda VanGosen, head of U.S. menu strategy at McDonald’s.
Last, but not least, came the two pickles. The crinkle-cut pickle McDonald’s uses means more crunch and more pickle flavor on the sandwich, Link explained.
Instead of the cardboard boxes that McDonald’s uses for most of its sandwiches, the original Crispy Chicken sandwich and the spicy version will be served in a foil bag.