McDonald’s will continue to prioritize chicken over the coming year.
“We're also seeing strong growth on our core menu, particularly on chicken, where we've been gaining share quite a bit of share on chicken. We've gained about a point of share on chicken in the last year,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said during the chain’s fourth quarter investor call for 2022.
Kempczinski later called chicken “a good growth opportunity” for the brand, adding that McDonald’s “was going to be focused on that with some very specific products as opposed to having that maybe be something in the past that was a little more left to individual markets to kind of chart their course.”
No specific details about any planned innovation in chicken were released during the call.
Pressure to innovate in chicken space
In recent years, McDonald’s has struggled to find a viable competitor for the chicken sandwich wars.
In July 2019, the board of the National Owners Association (NOA), a group of McDonald’s franchise owners, called chicken sandwiches a top priority to help bring in more customers and better compete in the chicken sandwich wars, which boosted sales for the entire quick service restaurant chicken market.
In August 2020, Kempczinski promised customers that innovation in chicken would be coming by the end of the year. The chain launched Spicy Chicken McNuggets and Mighty Hot Sauce one month later, the first time McDonald’s introduced a new Chicken McNuggets flavor.
The long-awaited launch finally occurred in 2021 with the addition of the Crispy Chicken Sandwiches to menus nationwide.
The Crispy Chicken Sandwich is a white meat chicken filet topped with pickles on a buttered potato roll, while the Spicy Chicken Sandwich is topped with Spicy Pepper Sauce and the Deluxe Chicken Sandwich features additional toppings of lettuce, tomato and mayo.
