McDonald’s plans to test hand-breaded chicken tenders and sandwiches at nearly 200 restaurants across the US and Ireland next year, part of a broader push to win back customers who have cut back on fast food amid high prices.
The hand-breaded items are already being sold at a handful of Chicago-area locations and at roughly 10,000 restaurants across Asia. The company is looking to compete directly with chains like Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s, which hand-batter and hand-bread chicken in restaurants daily.
Jill McDonald, the company’s executive vice president, called hand-breaded chicken “a significant opportunity to upgrade taste and quality” during an investor presentation last week.
The shift is not simple logistics for a chain built on speed. Fresh, hand-breaded chicken requires new equipment, extra workstations and a slower, more complex cooking process than the frozen, pre-breaded nuggets McDonald’s currently ships to stores.
New Equipment, New Costs
Chicken for the test will arrive at restaurants raw, marinated and frozen, meaning locations will need thawing cabinets they don’t currently use. Stores will also need a separate station where workers bread the chicken before it goes to the fryer — a process that takes more space and more time than dropping pre-breaded nuggets straight into hot oil.
Because of contamination risks, employees who handle raw chicken can’t double as sandwich assemblers or other counter staff, raising concerns among franchisees that the change could mean more labor hours per shift.
McDonald’s says it is working to offset that through its broader “NEXT” spending plan, an $8.5 billion, multi-year initiative aimed at improving restaurant operations and efficiency so stores won’t need to add workers to handle the new chicken items.
Part of that effort includes an AI ordering system called ArchIQ, already running at 8,000 restaurants in China, which the company says will take drive-thru orders and “free 50 hours of labor each week,” according to Brian Rice, McDonald’s executive vice president of technology.
A History of Failed Attempts
McDonald’s isn’t the first chain to try this. Burger King scrapped its own hand-breaded chicken sandwich four years ago after concluding the recipe caused too much disruption across its restaurants.
McDonald’s says any wider rollout beyond the 200-store pilot will depend on how the test performs, and that it is working with franchise owners to address their concerns.
The chicken push is part of the company’s goal to gain 1.5 percentage points of market share in chicken products by 2030, as customers increasingly shift away from beef amid rising prices. The NEXT plan also includes new Chicken McNugget flavors and adjusted cooking times and oil volumes meant to improve existing menu items.
Implementing the changes is expected to cost US franchisees about $800,000 each over several years, an expense McDonald’s says it will help offset through the $8.5 billion in cash and rent breaks tied to the NEXT program, though support will vary by operator.
McDonald’s also plans to open 2,100 new restaurants globally this year, adding to the more than 13,700 US locations it already operates, most of them franchised. The company expects new restaurants to contribute about 2.5% of systemwide sales growth in 2027 and around 2% by 2030.
The company’s stock is down more than 23% so far this year.
