Mcdonald’s expands meatless experiment
• Mcdonald’s Corp. is expanding its Beyond Meat experiment into more restaurants across southwestern Ontario and extending the company’s first plant-based hamburger trial to seven months.
In late September, McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago picked Ontario — specifically 28 restaurants in and around London, Ont. — as the test zone for its hotly anticipated Beyond Meat sandwich, called the Plant, Lettuce, Tomato (PLT). Next week, Mcdonald’s will add the PLT to the menu at 27 more locations in two more southwestern Ontario areas: Kitchener- Waterloo and Guelph.
The incremental expansion of the test comes at a time when most of Mcdonald’s competitors already have a trendy plant- based sandwich on their menus. But Michaela Charette, the head of consumer insights at Mcdonald’s Canada, said her company is willing to take its time to figure out the “the best product possible.”
In the second leg of the test, the PLT will be 50 cents cheaper, at $ 5.99. Charette said the drop in price didn’t have to do with customer feedback, but more to see how the change would influence demand. The rollout will also have support from advertising for the first time.
Phase Two won’t mess with the current configuration of mustard, ketchup, mayo, pickles, onion, tomato, lettuce, tomato, processed cheese and the Beyond Meat patty — though one of the most popular requests from customers was to hold the cheese and the mayo, the only two animal products on the sandwich.
Charette stopped short of drawing any conclusions about what those details might say about who exactly is eating the PLT. She said she also found the sandwich was often paired with meat products such as the Junior Chicken. And Mcdonald’s has been very clear — for the benefit of vegans and vegetarians — that the PLT patty is cooked on the same grill as beef, chicken and eggs.
Mcdonald’s wouldn’t reveal sales figures, or where the new burger ranked in popularity compared to classics like the Big Mac and the Quarter Pounder. Charette did say that Mcdonald’s saw higher demand for the PLT is urban areas. In fact, the only franchisee who declined to continue with the PLT test was in a more rural area, operating three stores around Sarnia, Ont., a McDonald’s spokesperson confirmed.
The point of the test, Charette said, is to figure out: “Do you need to change the recipe or not? Who’s really buying this? Who is it appealing to?” So far, she said, feedback has shown that McDonald’s has the right recipe and right name for the sandwich.
“You don’t want to make any assumptions on a small group of people. So the expanded scope in the second phase of the test is really exciting for me.”