How We Helped McDonald's Become Famous for Chicken

The Client & Challenge

We're all familiar with McDonald's - they serve millions of people across the world every week. And while they have several staples on their menu - items they're well-loved and renowned for - they're always looking for ways to better serve their customers.

Knowing that there is growing opportunity to capture a piece of the chicken market meant that McDonald's needed to understand where to go next with their global menu. They needed a partner to assess the landscape, look specifically at their roster of menu items, and pinpoint where exactly innovation could take them.

The Solution

Dig Insights and McDonald’s partnered on a multi-phase consumer insight engagement to:

1. Understand the QSR landscape in chicken

2. Assess McDonald’s global brand in chicken

3. Identify the optimal McDonald’s menu that includes chicken innovation 

Focusing just on this third stage of identifying the optimal McDonald’s menu that includes chicken innovation, several business questions needed to be addressed:

• How do spicy options perform?

• How incremental are other chicken items on their menu?

• What is the role of the Chicken Big Mac on their menu?

• How can they add a premium chicken sandwich to their menu without cannibalizing their current offering?

To answer these questions, the Dig Insights team leaned on our platform, Upsiide. The gamified, intuitive Upsiide consumer interfaces allowed us to test up to 50 in-market menu items and potential new menu items against each other. This revealed key insights such as: 

• McDonald’s is not primarily thought of as a chicken QSR, but it has several chicken menu items that perform on par with offerings from chicken-focused QSR brands.

• Chicken tenders are a popular innovation from McDonald’s, but projected loyalty is weak. This identifies a need to make chicken tenders more unique and compelling (potentially with the addition of unique dips)

• Grilled chicken and bone in chicken are a poor fit with the McDonald’s brand

• The Chicken Big Mac does not have the broadest appeal, but there is a group of consumers who find it highly compelling. This will help it to break through in market. Moreover, this innovation is incremental vs. the Big Mac, which helps the Chicken Big Mac to drive overall growth for McDonald’s

• The Chicken Big Mac was identified as an ideal Limited Time Offer. When tested on Upsiide, the McDonald’s team discovered the innovation idea has a relatively narrow appeal (ie. niche) but a committed group of consumers who are very excited to try it. This commitment will translate into the in-market buzz we want to see with a limited time offer (LTO).

• McCrispy was identified as a winning idea that is clearly positioned as a premium chicken sandwich.

The Outcome

The work that Dig Insights carried out allowed the McDonald's team to build out a holistic menu that could flex based on geography and that answered key questions like:

• which innovations make the most sense for our brand?

• what number of menu items should be offered?

• what is the best combination of menu items to maximize reach?

The McCrispy launched as a global permanent menu innovation and is already a multi-billion dollar item. The team walked away with a path forwards to stand out within the QSR chicken space.